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As cruising in India is still at its nascent stage, CruiseBay is committed to grow the market in the country. The company also works closely with Cruise Professionals for joint marketing initiatives as well as bookings for certain cruise brands.
C cruises-only company founded 10 years ago, claimed the company’s CEO, Nikhil Thakurdas. Sharing further details, he said, “CruiseBay is essentially a B2C platform where we allow people or visitors
on our website to research cruise options from over 35 cruise companies. We feature over 1,500 itineraries on the website as part of completing 10 years. We have also recently launched a mobilefriendly website. We may look at signing on three to four more franchise partners this year to grow the business.” Sharing how they are closely working with Cruise Professionals for joint marketing, Thakurdas revealed, “Coincidentally, Cruise Professionals and we have completed 10 years simultaneously a few months ago. Our association dates back to a time when we founded our respective respec companies. As Cruise Professionals represents big cruise brands in India like Princess Cruises, Cunard Cruises, P&O Cruises; we work closely with its team for all our bookings for these brands along with some joint marketing initiatives. As a pure B2C company, I believe that Cruise Professionals sees value in working with us to reach out to a wide base of consumers. The partnership has worked well because almost every year we do something together on a joint marketing or a joint promotional level. This year, we are doing a joint digital marketing campaign for two brands—Princess Cruises and Hurtigruten.” With Jalesh Cruises set to become a game changer, Thakurdas said, “We’ve done a fair amount of business with Costa Cruises’ India product which sails from December to March. We see a lot of potential in the domestic cruise product to grow and we are excited to see how this new product by Zen Cruises performs. The Indian cruise market is an extremely new avenue, and we are here to grow its sphere.” Despite lamenting about the current scenario of the growth of cruising in India, he is hopeful about the rising number in the future. “Only 175,000 out of 16 or 20 million people who travel abroad take a cruise which means that not even one per cent of travellers are choosing cruises. Thus, it’s a huge upside in terms of being able to sell cruises to our clientele. The market looks promising in the future. If the 1 per cent becomes 3 per cent, the numbers will increase from 175,000 to 500,000 people. That should happen in the next year too as Indians are big spenders. The popular destinations for cruises include the Far East, Mediterranean, Alaska and Scandinavia. Scandinavia has picked up dramatically in the last couple of years because travellers now want to explore the Baltic in the summer. Earlier, the skew was entirely towards Mediterranean, but now we are witnessing an equal split between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean,” he explained.
If the 1 per cent becomes 3 per cent, the numbers will increase from 175,000 to 500,000 people. That should happen in the next year too as Indians are big spenders. The market looks promising in the future