Online Booking Capability Arrives at Princess.com

[eroller]

Princess has finally joined the ranks of Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Costa, Holland America, Celebrity, NCL, and Disney in allowing consumers to book directly online via their website. They have resisted for years, but looks like they finally caved in.

 

Ernie

 

 

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SANTA CLARITA, Calif., Nov. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Princess Cruises

debuts a revolutionary cruise planning tool on the princess.com web

site, giving users a new and improved way to find just the perfect sailing.

 

Called "Searchlight," the innovative tool is a quick and intuitive way

to search for and compare up to three cruises at a time with just a few

mouse clicks. The custom-designed proprietary program quickly and easily

finds a cruise that meets a consumer's travel parameters using four

different criteria -- destination, date, ship and duration -- and

displays the results to help choose the best voyage in seconds.

 

"This is an exciting, next-generation cruise planning tool," said Jan

Swartz, Princess' senior vice president of customer service and sales.

"We did extensive user studies to find out what consumers really want on

a web site and overwhelmingly they told us they'd like the ability to

easily find the cruise they want, and to make a comparison with other

sailings -- we've given them both."

 

With just a mouse click, users can instantly see what ships go where,

when and for how long, eliminating the guesswork that has typically

defined the cruise search process. Searchlight also enables users to do

a side-by-side comparison of up to three separate cruises, considering

such elements as price, cabin category and itinerary. After finding the

perfect sailing, booking the cruise online is also easy.

 

"No one in the industry is making it as easy as Princess to research and

plan a cruise online," added Swartz. "Our new web feature gives people

exactly what they're looking for -- an easy way to identify the perfect

cruise that matches their personal vacation criteria. The old way of

searching for cruises using pull-down menus and the hunt-and-peck system

as you guess about which ships go where, when, is thankfully now obsolete."

 

The feature is part of a new web site re-design for Princess, meant to

give the user a cruise planning and booking experience that directly

correlates to the actual way people research and plan their vacation.

The site is organized to intuitively offer the options that web users

look for, and the information-rich site now offers five distinct

sections to facilitate the full cruise shopping process. Users can

"Learn About Our Cruises," "Find and Compare Cruises," "Book a Cruise,"

"Prepare for Your Cruise" or access "Customer Care."

 

"Users can move through our web site as they would prefer, and not have

to follow a flow of information that we prescribe," said Swartz.

 

Additional information about Princess' products and services is

available through a professional travel agent, by calling

1-800-PRINCESS, or by visiting the company's website at http://www.princess.com.

[Toto2Kansas]

It sure has, you might want to read the thread already started about it.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=250253