Cruise Travelers’ Service Perceptions: A Critical Content Analysis

Abstract

This paper examines the main elements of online reviews left by popular cruise ships’ travelers. The eight most popular cruise ships were selected. We aimed to pinpoint the service quality experiential perceptions of cruise travelers regarding their higher or lower value for money ratings. Leximancer 4.5 software was used to derive the linkage and co-occurrence between service concepts in the online narratives of 2000 guests from Cruisecritic.com. The evaluation showed 10 areas addressed by the descriptions of the cruise’s perceived quality. These are “ship,” “staff,” “food,” “entertainment,” “room,” “area,” “embarkation,” “excursion” “disembarkation,” and “port.” Furthermore, the results highlight themes like “ship,” “staff,” “food,” “entertainment,” “room,” and “area” as belonging to the high-satisfaction group (excellent/very good), while “embarkation,” “disembarkation,” “excursion,” and “port” belong to the low-satisfaction group (poor/terrible). The study offers useful insights into cruise travelers’ general perceived experience according to user-generated content, and enables the identification of the main themes associated with different satisfaction groups.