Virgin Voyages is a new company that will be offering cruises to the Caribbean, Mexico, and Europe. With the help of blockchain technology, it hopes to eliminate long wait times for guests looking for their next vacation.
The what cruise lines do not require covid vaccine is a new project from Virgin Voyages. The company aims to quell the dreaded cruise queues by offering a range of services and amenities that will make guests feel like they are on their own private island.
After months of pandemic-related delays, Virgin Voyages’ first cruise ship took sail this week, promising plenty of dining and entertainment choices while reducing one thing that has frustrated cruise customers for years: lengthy lineups.
When the Scarlet Lady set sail for the Caribbean on her maiden trip from the United States on Wednesday, she gave her 1,300-plus guests an app to help them avoid lengthy queues by enabling them to make digital reservations for the ship’s restaurants, dance performances, and other activities. It’s also mind-boggling when certain on-ship activities begin to reduce wait times.
“Queues were one of the things customers told us they disliked about cruises,” said Dee Cooper, senior vice president of design and customer experience at Virgin Voyages.
Early user evaluations of the Sailor app, which include individuals who participated in shorter test trips in the south of England before the official launch this week, indicate that physical queues have been replaced with similarly unpleasant digital ones. On Google’s Play Store, the app has a 1.7-star rating, with several customers complaining that the system kept failing while they were at sea.
“With the technology, we’re learning how to bed it in and make it resilient,” Ms. Cooper said. The business claims to be resolving problems and improving the software on a regular basis. Guests may still check-in at the airport and request reservations from crew members, according to the statement.
The ship, which is part of Richard Branson’s Bain Capital-backed cruise venture, is designed to be an adults-only playground, with six restaurants, including a dining hall with a variety of vendors, a tattoo studio, a nightclub, a karaoke lounge, immersive modern dance shows, and six additional bars.
The Sailor app also activates the required wristband, which serves as their digital cabin, wallet, and bar tab, provides 24/7 customer service via chat, and allows guests to order food and drink to their location, as well as make reservations, allowing them to avoid lines in front of restaurants and fitness centers.
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According to Bill Panoff, a former cruise ship director and editor in chief of Porthole Cruise Magazine, “queuing has become a greater issue for cruise companies to handle as ships become larger and there are more passengers to manage.”
In big dining halls, several cruise companies still manage service by giving passengers fixed slots, which may be requested but aren’t necessarily guaranteed. For a fee, several companies provide passes that allow you to bypass queues and make reservations. For at least $49.99 per cabin, Carnival Corp.’s Faster to Fun Pass unlocks benefits like as priority check-in and disembarkation lanes, as well as a dedicated phone line to contact guest services. The pass was stopped this year to make room for more Covid-19 procedures, but it will be reinstated in 2022, according to the firm.
Cruise lines have grown increasingly dependent on technology to handle passengers in the years preceding up to the epidemic, according to Mr. Panoff. Many now have applications that enable clients to book dinner tables and check-in times, allowing them to stagger crowds while maintaining control, he added.
Evening activities on Virgin Voyages cruises are scheduled in such a manner that people arrive at the restaurants at different times.
Virgin Voyages photo
Disney Cruise Line, on the other hand, introduced a “virtual line” to its onboard Navigator app this year. To preserve social distance at ports, guests must join the digital queue when ready to depart.
To reduce queues, Virgin is using more analog crowd-control techniques. Take, for example, the restaurant, bar, and nightlife scene. It not only checks the box of providing guests with a diverse range of cuisine and entertainment, but it also allows ship managers to schedule events at different times to naturally stagger dinner service, rather than imposing set sit-down times or forcing passengers to scramble for reservations within limited time frames, according to Ms. Cooper.
“We know some people will go early and eat, but others will walk into a bar and listen to the jazz band or participate in the Ibiza-style sunset party,” she said.
Other systems, like as the Covid-19 testing stations that Scarlet Lady passengers must pass through before boarding, were also tested on the British test trips. After some visitors reported waiting for five hours to board the boat on journeys along the south coast of England in August, Ms. Cooper decided to add more stations than she had intended for and relocate them closer to the dock. The business claims to have made significant changes to the embarkation experience since then.
Ms. Cooper said the Scarlet Lady’s design team would now watch on-deck how consumers traverse the ship and its areas under real-world circumstances, now that the larger problems have been worked out.
“Do we need to open up this entry even more since it’s a bottleneck now?” Or do we need to create a few more comfortable corners for folks to hide in?” she wondered. “We attempted to include how people naturally perceive a place and feel at ease and confident in it into the design, but we’ll continue to learn.”
Katie Deighton can be reached at [email protected]
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The virgin cruises covid is a new company that aims to quell the dreaded cruise queue. Virgin Voyages offers new and luxurious cruises with an array of activities for everyone.
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