Cruise ship passenger spending patterns in Pacific island ports

The cruise business has recorded a solid growth rate in the past 20 years, with this development being driven by corporate mergers and takeovers, the launching of mega‐ships, the opening up of new destinations and the growing propensity of people who choose to cruise. This study measures the expenditure patterns of cruise ship passengers in seven Pacific island ports of call. Some of these ports receive up to 32 cruise ship visits per year and their economies are partly reliant on them. It is important, therefore, for service suppliers, retailers and handicraft producers to know what appeals to cruise passengers so that they can continue to produce the products in demand profitably. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Analyzing cruise ship itineraries patterns and vessels diversity in ports of the European maritime region: A hierarchical clustering approach

In this paper, European maritime cruise ship traffic of 1031 ports visited by 209 cruises is evaluated with different mathematical tools. Through an innovative ecological analogy, the diversity of ships in every port has been calculated using Simpson, Shannon, Margalef, and Berger-Parker diversity indexes and Automatic Identification System data from the cruise fleet in year 2015. By combining the results of Visiting Vessels Diversity with an Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering analysis, five different homogeneous cruise regions were identified that match with those normally established by cruise ship associations. Classification trees techniques also demonstrated that cruise ships' diversity in a port could significantly predict these cruise regions with high levels of confidence. All of this information together can serve as an input to develop and improve economic and environmental strategies of cruise ports and their cities. The primary goal of this paper is to obtain a picture of the behaviour of cruise traffic in the European maritime region, grouping ports in clusters based on the absence or presence of cruise ship on those ports and determining the diversity of vessels in each port.     

The moderating effect of personal and situational characteristics in behavioural factors affecting ports of call

This research aims to study the moderating effects of cruise passengers’ gender, age, education, and prior experiences on a Mediterranean port of call destination image formation and the influence that image and passenger satisfaction has on future behavioural intentions. The partial least squares technique is applied to test the hypotheses developed with a sample of 492 cruise passengers. Our findings show that (1) gender, age, education, and experience have a moderating influence on the image of ports of call, on cruise passengers’ satisfaction, and on future behavioural intentions derived from cruise passengers’ satisfaction; (2) prior experience has a moderating influence on the image formation of ports of call.