The program, called Set Sail, is available to passengers booked on the Navigator of the Seas.

Cruise tickets are not the same as airline tickets....so much of the anticipation of the cruise is related to receiving your documents.... I know less and less stress has been put on this from the cruise lines....and most now provide you with an "all in one" docutech printed wire-o bound booklet full of junk... I miss the days of separate "shore excursion" books, and other brochures that gave you more information on your "ship" and "cruise"......

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Originally posted by wile1170:

How nice to be able to go online and "print out" your e-ticket for the cruise...I hope this isn't the future of cruising...

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I also love to receive a nice cruise document package. My favorite is still Silversea, although Cunard and Holland America are quite nice as well. Most of the other major cruise lines have rather boring cruise document packages these days.

Unfortunately, I think edocs are the way of the future. I wouldn't be surprised if by next year most major cruise lines require edocs, unless you want to pay for a paper document package. It's just another way for them to save money.

I do think online check-in is a great idea. It's going to be a necessary form of crowd control should Carnival move forward with it's 200,000 gt Pinnacle Project and RCI's speculated 250,000 gt ship in the design phase.

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Originally posted by Ernst:
I never understood this whole ticket business - why isn`t it enough that the cruise line knows my passport details, and I just show my passport before boarding the vessel to get my cabin keys and my boarding pass.

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The best check-in I ever experienced was on the MSC OPERA in January. MSC doesn't even have pre-registration on their website, yet when I checked in at the pier I wasn't required to fill out a single form. I don't even know if they had my address and phone number? I just handed them my passport and documents. In two minutes I was onboard the ship. Frankly I don't know how they did it with all the information required by our government agencies these days. At no time during the cruise was I required to fill out any forms either. Go figure.

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Originally posted by eroller:
At no time during the cruise was I required to fill out any forms either. Go figure.

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It is rather odd when cruise lines send you a ticket via the post with your name and address on the envelope (and obviously in their database) yet they enclose a form which asks you to write your name and address on it!

Cruise Ticket/booklets are very nice as collectables, but e-tickets are the way forward. I just hope they knock the reduced admin costs off our fares.

Look at the Easycruise web site, that is a great example of simplified booking procedures.

The RCI site is good too, but more complex due to the many cruise ship, itinerary, flights, pre/post hotels and cabin options on offer.

[ 06-14-2005: Message edited by: Malcolm @ cruisepage ]

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Originally posted by sunviking82:
A cruise package will most likely still be sent with luggage tags, shore excursion information and the like. If you have ever had your documents lost in the mail like I have the e-ticket is the way to go.

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I don't think so. That would defeat the purpose. Shore excursions you can research and book online. Luggage tags can be picked up at the pier. I don't see the cruise lines mailing anything in the future.

I agree I would rather see the money from ticket distribution costs spent on food and entertainment. Of course it's debatable if that would actually happen, or just just end up as higher profits for the company or in a raise for the executives.

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Originally posted by eroller:

I agree I would rather see the money from ticket distribution costs spent on food and entertainment. Of course it's debatable if that would actually happen, or just just end up as higher profits for the company or in a raise for the executives.

Ernie

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I think you hit the nail on the head...as with airlines and the whole e-ticket/check in kiosks, etc.....they have not improved meals, etc....the same will go with cruise lines. Although they will be saving money and postage or UPS/FedEx in not sending ticket packages, they will have to continually invest in the computer technology to keep this system up to date, etc...no savings will be passed on to passengers, only to the shareholders.

Carniv-ore already has a form of pre-check in system when you cruise with them...you print out a form of an "confirmation that you checked-in" and it allows you to go into a different embarkation line supposedly making the check in experience go faster...SUPPOSEDLY!!

I sell cruises for a living. Our office is currently sending out between 300 and 350 cruise documents EACH DAY! First, we have to wait for the cruise lines to send them to us--sometimes these are delayed, causing anxious customers to call. Then we send them to the clients, via DHL for more security, an expensive operation. Sometimes even then, docs get lost, or the client loses them before the trip!

Currently Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and NCL are set up with us to only issue e-docs; Princess & Carnival will be next. When you look at these docs, they are pretty much exactly like the paper docs that they would otherwise send--no more fancy, colorful booklets and such, anyway. The only "bump in the road" with e-docs is no luggage tags; people get these at the pier, (just like your airline luggage tags), but it is a minor hassle.

Shore excursion info. is no longer sent with docs for the mass market lines--all of that is done on line. Prices and tour descriptions are subject to constant change, making pre-printed information obsolete.

Do I like e-docs? Personally, no, but I understand this is the way of things in travel, like everything else. I think that eventually only the ultra-luxury lines will be offering lovely sets of travel documents, which will have been paid for of course by the higher fares charged on those lines.

For instance, if you pre-registered online, you should be able to swipe your passport through a card reader on the kiosk which will verify the identity since it's bar coded. Either that, or you could use a pre-registered credit card to verify identity which is what airlines do. The kiosk could even take your picture and imprint the picture into the cruise card. The kiosk would then print out your cruise card which is also your boarding pass to board the ship. The kiosk could advise you to keep your passport handy, and the passport picture can be checked by security as you board the ship. Certainly the technology is available, but of course there is an expense involved with the kiosks.

Airlines have found them to be a huge cost saver in the long run. I think cruise lines will find them a necessity if they want to process 6000 passengers for a single ship in a matter of hours.

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Originally posted by Linerrich:

I sell cruises for a living. Our office is currently sending out between 300 and 350 cruise documents EACH DAY!

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WOW Rich! Great business for you but that is a LOT of tickets! What is really inefficient is that the cost of sending out tickets is incurred twice. Once by the cruise line and a second time by the travel agency. While I like those paper ticket packets, edocs are truly a much more efficient way of distributing tickets.

I guess if someone doesn't have an email address, the agency can print out the edocs and mail them to the client. It's hard to believe that anyone doesn't have an email address these days, but I know they exist!

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Originally posted by eroller:

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I guess if someone doesn't have an email address, the agency can print out the edocs and mail them to the client. It's hard to believe that anyone doesn't have an email address these days, but I know they exist!

Ernie

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That's exactly how our office handles it for people without email--and remember, it's currently only 3 lines that are doing e-docs, with the remainder coming in the traditional way.

Another factor in the cruise lines wanting to issue edocs is the volume on their end--Lines like Carnival and RCI have literally tens of thousands of passengers to process each week! It's a major printing and publishing operation just to process all those cruise docs!

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Originally posted by eroller:
It's hard to believe that anyone doesn't have an email address these days, but I know they exist!

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Personally I like e-tickets, and online check-in for flights where available. It's surprising how peoples' tickets differ though. Ernie, my HAl 'tickets' were a cardboard folder.. well thick paper really, containing a ticket with a few vouchers, that's it, no boarding info zilch... well below par.. OK we did have pier pick-up, but many of the other passenger were walking in with the same folder.... some others had sort of black leather looking things. MSC's docs differ in Europe. My best have been Fred O, lots of info & bits, but with MSC you do get nice booklets and postcards too. Cunard.... OK... not bad... NCL quite good too, the folders and contents have differed on each cruise. HAL basically came bottom of our lot. NCL was worst for paperwork though, everthing was triplicated, and even though all info was submitted online, and I took a printout of it too, they would not accept it on check in and the lot had to be written out again!!! Not just for us, everyone.. lots of moans, that wasn't even in the US either. In the US one doesn't even get an english speaking clerk.. speaks for itself, when they have never seen a UK passport before either.

I don't see why any tickets are needed for any ship or airline... as long as everything is pre-Booked and ALL citizens from wherever have passports... a swipe will do. Lots of money saving. Those customers without email can easily be sent the tour options. As for labels people can do their own, and mayb just slap a specific coloured sticker on at the terminal for deck/fwd/aft etc.