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Temporal distance refers to the time between purchase and consumption in advanced-sales industries. We explore how the response of aggregate demand to price changes with temporal distance in a large, proprietary data set of Florida cruise prices, bookings, and product attributes. We offer the first evidence that cruise demand becomes more sensitive to price during the advance sales period, unlike extant findings in other settings. The results also show that demand is greatest late in the advance sales period, providing the first finding that a late-season high-demand period coincides with a late-season increase in aggregate price sensitivity. The high-demand effect more than offsets the high-price-responsiveness pattern, leading the firm to increase prices throughout the advance sales period. Although the data do not disentangle multiple competing explanations for the main findings, they are large enough to appear in simple data visualizations and robust enough to replicate across many model specifications, parameterizations, and partitions of the data.

Purpose This study aims to apply theory on consumer learning in virtual experiences to compare how media technologies (i.e. virtual reality [VR] and standard websites) and users’ gender influence the ways in which tourists gather pre-purchase information. Design/methodology/approach A laboratory experiment with fully immersive VR was conducted to examine consumers’ behavior in gathering pre-purchase information. The sample comprised 128 consumers who had taken a cruise vacation or who were considering purchasing a cruise package in the near future. Findings The results generally reveal the central role of the feeling of presence, which, in turn, positively impacts users’ enjoyment and aspects of consumer learning (i.e. brand attitude, product knowledge and purchase intent). In particular, the results suggest that compared with standard websites, VR facilitated the tourists’ learning as consumers, especially among women, who tend to dominate the information-gathering stage of planning family vacations. Practical implications The results imply that travel agencies and tourism centers working with cruise vacation companies should incorporate VR to make their offers more attractive, especially to women. Originality/value The study was the first to apply theory on consumer learning in the cruise tourism industry, specifically to compare fully immersive VR devices versus standard websites and gauge the effect of gender.

Purpose This study aims to test the relationships among involvement, perceived price, perceived quality, affective satisfaction, perceived value, attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty in the cruise line industry. In addition, this study attempted to identify whether the differences in these variables exist across first-time and repeat cruise customers. Design/methodology/approach The web-based survey was used. A total of 403 complete responses were used for data analysis. Anderson and Gerbing’s (1988) two-step approach was used to achieve study objectives. Findings The t-test analyses demonstrated that repeat cruise customers expressed significantly lower perceived price and higher affective satisfaction, perceived value and behavioral loyalty than first-time cruise travelers. The structural equation modeling results revealed that involvement has an important role in loyalty generation process. However, the structural model did not significantly differ across first-time and repeat customers. Practical implications Overall, the results indicated the critical needs to develop individuals’ interest in cruise vacation with a particular cruise line. Cruise line operators who undertake promotion efforts that enhance people involvement with their cruise line should result in greater likelihood of choosing the same cruise line in the future. Originality/value With a lack of research about cruise line involvement and loyalty, this research contributes to theoretical understanding of intricate attitudinal and behavioral loyalty generation process across first-time and repeat cruise passengers.

Airline schedules are generally tight and fragile to disruptions. Disruptions can have severe effects on existing aircraft routings, crew pairings, and passenger itineraries that lead to high delay and recovery costs. A recovery approach should integrate the recovery decisions for all entities (aircraft, crew, passengers) in the system as recovery decisions about an entity directly affect the others’ schedules. Because of the size of airline flight networks and the requirement for quick recovery decisions, the integrated airline recovery problem is highly complex. In the past decade, an increasing effort has been made to integrate passenger and crew related recovery decisions with aircraft recovery decisions both in practice and in the literature. In this paper, we develop a new flight network based representation for the integrated airline recovery problem. Our approach is based on the flow of each aircraft, crew member, and passenger through the flight network of the airline. The proposed network structure allows common recovery decisions such as departure delays, aircraft/crew rerouting, passenger reaccommodation, ticket cancellations, and flight cancellations. Furthermore, we can implement aircraft cruise speed (flight time) decisions on the flight network. For the integrated airline recovery problem defined over this network, we propose a conic quadratic mixed integer programming formulation that can be solved in reasonable CPU times for practical size instances. Moreover, we place a special emphasis on passenger recovery. In addition to aggregation and approximation methods, our model allows explicit modeling of passengers and evaluating a more realistic measure of passenger delay costs. Finally, we propose methods based on the proposed network representation to control the problem size and to deal with large airline networks.

Purpose This paper aims to identify the drivers that explain loyalty behavior in cruise tourism with the aim of achieving a better understanding of repeat cruisers’ intentions to sail on the same ship or on another ship belonging to the same cruise line or cruise corporation. Design/methodology/approach Based on over 150,000 online reviews about their satisfaction and experience posted by cruisers using so-called electronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM), the authors apply both a graphic and an econometric technique through input-output circular plots and discrete choice models. Findings The main results show that cruisers’ behavior is influenced by multiple onboard attributes, such as the service crew, entertainment options, type of cabin, some characteristics of the ship (age, capacity) and the cruise line (Premium-Luxury versus mainstream), and, specifically, the quality and variety of the gastronomic experience. Practical implications The results highlight that repeats cruisers are predominantly linked to a cruise company or a cruise corporation rather than a particular ship. This result provides information on the moderators that can influence the customers’ repetition behavior, which might be useful for planning revenue management and extending knowledge on hospitality loyalty in general and in the cruise industry in particular, specifically under the current uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Originality/value The previous literature has essentially examined revisit intentions in the cruise market from a qualitative approach and the authors have found no study to date that has simultaneously addressed this issue in three dimensions, namely, ship, cruise line and cruise corporation. The research fills this gap by determining the reasons why passengers would repeat a cruise either on the same ship, with the same cruise line or the same cruise corporation based on previous experience.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of presence on users’ information processing in mediated visualizations using immersive virtual reality (VR) and websites, focusing on information understanding and cognitive load. The impact of user interfaces on users’ perception of presence is also tested. Design/methodology/approach A between-subjects laboratory experiment using two user interfaces – immersive VR and website – is carried out. It is complemented by a self-administered survey on the participants. Findings The current results indicate that an immersive VR interface improves tourists’ information processing by producing a heightened sense of presence. The results confirm that presence facilitates tourists’ information processing by increasing information understanding and decreasing cognitive load. Finally, a negative relationship between cognitive load and information understanding is obtained. Practical implications VR user interfaces are not only visually appealing but also cognitively optimized. Immersive VR devices can be introduced in the specific sale process of cruise trips through both offline channels (physical stores and travel agencies) and online channels to facilitate tourists’ information processing during the prepurchase phase. Originality/value The primary contribution lies in the integration of the theory of presence with two influential information processing frameworks, namely, cognitive load theory and cognitive fit theory. This integration provides a holistic perspective on how user interfaces influence consumer information processing in the unique context of cruise tourism, particularly during the stage of a prepurchase information search.

Existing work emphasizes the importance of traffic congestion externalities, but typically ignores cruising-for-parking externalities. We estimate the marginal external cruising costs of parking—that is, the time costs that an additional parked car imposes on drivers by inducing them to cruise for parking—which is one of the main components of cruising-for-parking externalities. The level of cruising is identified by examining to what extent the car inflow rate into a parking location falls with parking occupancy level. For a commercial street in Istanbul, we demonstrate that a marginal car parking for an hour induces 3.6 other cars to cruise for parking. This translates into an external cruising cost that is in the same order of magnitude with the external traffic congestion cost created by the trip.

Temporal distance refers to the time between purchase and consumption in advanced-sales industries. We explore how the response of aggregate demand to price changes with temporal distance in a large, proprietary data set of Florida cruise prices, bookings, and product attributes. We offer the first evidence that cruise demand becomes more sensitive to price during the advance sales period, unlike extant findings in other settings. The results also show that demand is greatest late in the advance sales period, providing the first finding that a late-season high-demand period coincides with a late-season increase in aggregate price sensitivity. The high-demand effect more than offsets the high-price-responsiveness pattern, leading the firm to increase prices throughout the advance sales period. Although the data do not disentangle multiple competing explanations for the main findings, they are large enough to appear in simple data visualizations and robust enough to replicate across many model specifications, parameterizations, and partitions of the data. This paper was accepted by Matthew Shum, marketing.

Purpose This study aims to adopt a holistic approach to understand cruise revenue management (RM) practices that cover ticket and onboard revenues, through a cross-disciplinary literature review and practitioner interviews. An integrated cruise RM framework was developed and served as a blueprint for future cruise studies and practices. Design/methodology/approach A multi-stage approach was adopted, including a systematic literature review, two-waves of interviews with 26 cruise industry practitioners and the development of a holistic RM framework. Findings This study clarifies cruise RM functions across product planning, delivery stages and identifies ticket and onboard RM components. These are incorporated into the integrated framework, with weather and itinerary/ route attractiveness as additional considerations. Interviews revealed that there is no difference in the RM cycle before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, although strategies and tactics may vary in response to the market situation. Research limitations/implications Suggestions are made regarding product and service bundling and ways for ticket and onboard revenue teams to work together to optimize total revenue. Future research directions are also provided under the categories of RM applications and concepts, ticket core activities, onboard core activities and overall issues. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to conduct a cross-disciplinary systematic literature review of cruise RM without imposing publication dates or specific databases and the first to develop an integrated cruise “total” RM framework that includes ticket and onboard revenues.

Airline operations are subject to frequent disruptions typically due to unexpected aircraft maintenance requirements and undesirable weather conditions. Recovery from a disruption often involves propagating delays in downstream flights and increasing cruise stage speed when possible in an effort to contain the delays. However, there is a critical trade-off between fuel consumption (and its adverse impact on air quality and greenhouse gas emissions) and cruise speed. Here we consider delays caused by such disruptions and propose a flight rescheduling model that includes adjusting cruise stage speed on a set of affected and unaffected flights as well as swapping aircraft optimally. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study in which the cruise speed is explicitly included as a decision variable into an airline recovery optimization model along with the environmental constraints and costs. The proposed model allows one to investigate the trade-off between flight delays and the cost of recovery. We show that the optimization approach leads to significant cost savings compared to the popular recovery method delay propagation. Flight time controllability, nonlinear delay, fuel burn and CO 2 emission cost functions, and binary aircraft swapping decisions complicate the aircraft recovery problem significantly. In order to mitigate the computational difficulty we utilize the recent advances in conic mixed integer programming and propose a strengthened formulation so that the nonlinear mixed integer recovery optimization model can be solved efficiently. Our computational tests on realistic cases indicate that the proposed model may be used by operations controllers to manage disruptions in real time in an optimal manner instead of relying on ad-hoc heuristic approaches.