Thanks to @BrianCurliss for hunting us! We just launched on Friday! Psyched to make Product Hunt.
Online cruise booking needed a good kick in the pants and some solid updating. That's precisely why we launched Cruise.me. Online cruise booking sites have not changed much since they first appeared in 90s. Complex UI/UX is why only 10% of people book online.
We thought that if you could travel all over the world and visit thousands of amazing places, you should be able to visualize and book on an interactive map. We eliminated most of the cumbersome drop down menus and added big, bold images of ports, destinations and ships.
There are over 25 new cruise ships ordered and on the way. These ships are built for the millennial generation. We wanted to introduce a site that was easier and much more fun to use.
I'll be here all day answering any questions. Would love to hear your feedback!
Cheers!
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@stephenchip Beautiful layout and design. It's very hard to make something like this look simple, great job!
Great to see you guys go live @stephenchip. I remember seeing the URL a little over a year or two ago and thought, "that's a great name!"
How do you see yourself compared to something like Dreamlines (https://www.dreamlines.de/) which has a loyal following in Europe?
@farazq would like this.
@daveambrose Hi Dave! Thanks for the kind words. We are quite fond of the name as well.
The main difference between Cruise.me and other sites is the user experience and the innovation.
For example, on Cruise.me, selecting a cabin on a cruise ship is as easy as selecting a seat on an airplane. That's not the case with other cruise booking sites. They display a static deck plan with no interactivity. This makes for a frustrating booking experience for the user.
Cruise.me also has a social layer. When someone logs into Cruise.me, they create a profile and can add favorite cruise lines, cruises, places they have visited and more. We have more features to add that are on our roadmap.
As we were creating solutions, and eliminating pain points, we realized that we had some innovative tech that could also be standalone products for the B2B community.
@stephenchip "The main difference between Cruise.me and other sites is the user experience and the innovation."
Playing devil's advocate, what's defensible long term about either of those?
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@drewmeyers@daveambrose Well, nothing is defensible because, no my knowledge, you can't patent a user experience. There very well may be some "me too" products that comes out in the future. I think Cruise.me certainly has a first mover advantage here.
@bentossel you might change your mind when you see some of the newer ships that have launched - e.g. skydiving, surf riding pools, much improved nightlife:) Also, Virgin Cruises is launching in a few years and will no doubt have some cool innovations on the product.
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I think this is great. I've been on a few cruises and remember the terrible booking experiences I have had. I was just playing around with it for a little bit and tried to book a trip, but it took me to a page where I had to email someone to book my trip. Is this an edge case I ran into? If so, is this something you can solve in the long term?
Having been deep in the cruise world for the past few years, I think any improvement to the current painful process of discovery and booking is fantastic. It should help convince more people to try a cruise, which is great. @stephenchip nice job on v1 and congrats on launching!
I like the visual and 'map-based' focus of Cruise.me. Its a nice change from most other products out there. Booking flow is also improved, especially cabin selection. I do think the product could be better with more content on the ships (e.g. reviews, photos). Overall good work!
@stephenchip What's the smallest boat size on your platform? I find it's really hard to find opportunities to travel by boat on non-massive ships and not chartered yachts, if that makes sense. I want like a 200-400 person 5-14 day trip. I haven't found a great place to find those trips, hopefully you can do it. Congrats on shipping this too!
@zackshapiro Hi Zack. The smallest ships we offer are the SilverSea Expedition class ships (Seabourn has smaller ships as well with roughly 450 passengers max).
For example, the Silver Galapagos, a SiverSea Expedition ship, only has 100 passengers. Because these expedition class ships are smaller in size, they can visit places larger cruise ships cannot. Check them out http://crs.to/hmsP
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I've always avoided the notion of taking a cruise for two reasons: 1) they are expensive and 2) they are so hard to book or even find any information other than going directly to every cruise line's website individually. I really like that you guys took an aggregation/learning/discovery/filtering approach to this. Took me 5 minutes to find 3 or 4 cruises I wouldn't mind taking with the wife this year. So much easier to figure this stuff out now.
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