Cruise revenue management: cross-discipline literature review and development of an integrated cruise revenue management framework

Purpose: This study aims to adopt a holistic approach to understand cruise revenue management (RM) practices that cover ticket and onboard revenues, through a cross-disciplinary literature review and practitioner interviews. An integrated cruise RM framework was developed and served as a blueprint for future cruise studies and practices. Design/methodology/approach: A multi-stage approach was adopted, including a systematic literature review, two-waves of interviews with 26 cruise industry practitioners and the development of a holistic RM framework. Findings: This study clarifies cruise RM functions across product planning, delivery stages and identifies ticket and onboard RM components. These are incorporated into the integrated framework, with weather and itinerary/ route attractiveness as additional considerations. Interviews revealed that there is no difference in the RM cycle before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, although strategies and tactics may vary in response to the market situation. Research limitations/implications: Suggestions are made regarding product and service bundling and ways for ticket and onboard revenue teams to work together to optimize total revenue. Future research directions are also provided under the categories of RM applications and concepts, ticket core activities, onboard core activities and overall issues. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to conduct a cross-disciplinary systematic literature review of cruise RM without imposing publication dates or specific databases and the first to develop an integrated cruise “total” RM framework that includes ticket and onboard revenues.