Notes on the business of selling cruises: commission, host agencies, follow-up, and the tooling gap that makes all three harder than they need to be.
Getting Off Spreadsheets · Part 2
The preferences that decide a cruise sale are physical, specific and easy to lose in an inbox. Where they belong instead, and what to capture after every sailing.
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Getting Off Spreadsheets · Part 3
What a large agency actually has is four systems, not more people. Which four, and why a stack of five subscriptions makes you the integration layer.
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The Money: Commissions and Deadlines · Part 1
Cruise commission moves at three separate moments and pays on a schedule that differs by line. Why expected against paid is the number almost nobody can produce.
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The Money: Commissions and Deadlines · Part 2
Final payment is the one deadline that cancels the sale by itself, and the date is never the same twice. What sets it, and the reminder layer most agents lack.
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The Money: Commissions and Deadlines · Part 3
A group is one contract with many bookings under it, and the block has its own clock. Review dates, tour conductor credits, and the three things a spreadsheet cannot hold.
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Cruise-Native by Design · Part 1
A four-minute test for any travel CRM: which of ship, sailing, itinerary and stateroom category exist as real records. What breaks downstream when they do not.
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Cruise-Native by Design · Part 2
A hotel quote describes a purchase. A cruise proposal describes a commitment with a schedule attached. What has to be in one, and why hand-built proposals decay.
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Cruise-Native by Design · Part 3
If you moved host agency next month, what would actually arrive on the other side? Four questions to ask before entering another client into somebody else's system.
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Enquiries rarely die of rejection. They get outranked by work with dates on it, at the second follow-up, every time. Six stages and six qualifying questions.
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Roughly twenty-five hours a year spent moving information that already exists, plus the errors re-typing introduces. Why confirmations are hard to read, and what to check.
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Repeat business is rarely lost to a competitor. It lapses while nobody notices. The signals that a client will sail again, and the short window after they return.
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Getting Off Spreadsheets · Part 1
A cruise booking is a set of dated obligations that keep changing after the sale. A row in a spreadsheet can hold the dates, but it cannot work them out or tell you when one is close.
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Two hotel groups launched apps inside ChatGPT in the same week. Both stop short of taking payment, and both are aimed squarely at the people who sell for them.
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