Corporate Blog

Every cruise line CIO is now grappling with the same board mandate: expand margin. The trouble is that the instinct to cut usually lands in the wrong place. Cruise lines operate one of the most capital-intensive guest experiences in travel. A modern ship is a floating hotel, restaurant, casino, and entertainment venue in one vessel that can cost upwards of $2 billion to build. But the spend that actually creates the guest experience (onboard staffing, food and beverage, entertainment, itinerary design) is exactly what cruise lines cannot compromise on. Cut there, and you erode the very thing g...

Managing a portfolio of onboard products for cruise lines requires a strategic approach that ensures each solution serves its purpose and augments value by integrating seamlessly with others. A successful portfolio aligns business objectives with the needs of end users and guests, driving innovation, profitability, and efficiency. At IBS Software, three key themes guide our portfolio management philosophy for our modern onboard products so that cruise lines can meet the expectations of their guests and employees.  1. Guest-centricity Many software providers emphasize the importance of the...

In my last blog post, I discussed the intricacies of managing and reporting onboard sales and suggested three critical features cruise lines should look for when searching for a new POS system. Here, I'll be looking at cruise line dining systems, how they impact how "traditional dining" products are managed, and the knock-on effect on the customer experience. A key challenge in managing dining products and experiences is that the underlying workflows can vary greatly from cruise line to cruise line, ship to ship, and even restaurant to restaurant on the same ship. Cruise lines offer different ...

When I started working in systems and IT for a cruise line several years ago, I was amazed at how complex the technical landscape was to support the business, and how many systems were in place to do so. What should have been relatively straightforward was a challenging, costly, and resource-intensive IT administration feat. Even the simplest of changes were overburdened by the sheer amount of forward planning required to carry them out. While the systems we used had served their purpose, they stagnated in time, becoming a right headache to manage. This was a widely recognized challenge across...