National Cruise Week
In case you were unaware, we are in the middle of National Cruise Week. Around my way you would have been hard pressed to notice. The travel industry doesn’t even have a big consumer show celebrating cruising. That is held in March (next year 27-28 March at Olympia in London. This year it was at Excel in London last March ). In the local travel agents (supposedly 2000 are involved) I saw no great displays either just the usual Caribbean or Mediterranean cruise cards posted in windows. Yet 1.5 million of us go on cruising; many more than go skiing for example.
So what publicity was there. If you google it, the first stories that come up relate to 2008! Then up popped a YouGov poll to tell us that Venice was our preferred port of call closely followed by Barcelona. But Venice won the poll because just 5% voted for it and Barcelona got 4% which suggests that most people chose ports that most other people didn’t agree with. So how useful is that for us to know?
When asked what people preferred in a port 53% voted for port scenery and excursions. Well they are unlikely to vote stay on the ship are they.
Maybe the most interesting results came from two answers. Men preferred (29%) meeting the local people (I wonder what sex of local people) and women (19%) preferred shopping to meeting the locals.
You really would have thought given how popular cruising has become that they could have come up with some interesting details than what the cynical amongst us might have guessed. And you would have thought the travel industry could have had the biggest show in the same week.
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