Abstract
The U.S. cruise companies Carnival Corporation and Royal Caribbean Cruises control two thirds of the global cruise ship capacity. They share the ambition to significantly increase their presence in Europe but they do not share the same strategy. Various Carnival brands are dedicated to specific European markets. Their ship capacities are allocated to these markets, and their prices are set locally. Royal Caribbean’s main brands, on the other hand, are global. Their capacities are not market-specific, and their prices are set centrally in Miami and applied uniformly in all markets world-wide. The strategic differences can be reduced to a fundamentally different approach to market segmentation. This paper uses microeconomic modelling to evaluate both companies’ strategies with respect to their economic performance given the heterogeneous market conditions in Europe. The results show that Carnival’s European strategy is superior. However, Royal Caribbean’s recent acquisition of Pullmantur and their plans to create a cruise operator for France seem to be steps in the right direction.
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Vogel, M. (2009). Is Europe One Market or Many? The US Cruise Companies’ Segmentation Problem. In: Conrady, R., Buck, M. (eds) Trends and Issues in Global Tourism 2009., vol 2009. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92199-8_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92199-8_13
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