Thinking of a cruise for your next event?

By Joe Condrill

It sounds like a lot of fun — having your annual national convention aboard a cruise ship with the Caribbean, Atlantic or Pacific as your location or backdrop. But are the social seas really an ideal setting for your organization?

I’m a meeting planner like you, but I grew up living around the world and now serve as a guest lecturer in the cruise industry. I’ve been on both sides of the fence so I can offer a unique perspective on evaluating whether a cruise meeting might fit your event and the challenges that need to be addressed.

First, if you’ve got an upcoming meeting, now is a good time to plan a meeting on board for two major reasons: The economy makes your organizational meeting very attractive to the cruise industry, and the cruise industry is still introducing new ships, most of which have expanded meeting capabilities aboard. If you have the flexibility of hosting your event to coincide with the cruise industry’s off-season, you could get even lower rates. (Off-season, as far as the cruise industry is concerned, is when the kids are in school.)

A reality of all meetings aboard cruise ships is that you cannot expect to have a traditional meeting from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Your cruise meeting is, in fact, a meeting surrounded by a vacation. All the organizational meetings I’ve seen aboard have had to adapt their schedule to a greatly shortened format as a result. So how do you adapt your meeting agenda to be suited for a cruise ship?

You need to define your budget and revamp your program with the understanding that you’ll only be able to hold your group’s attention for a short time before all the shipboard activities take away from what you and your organization are trying to accomplish. Do some research online to look at individual ships and their schedules. Explain what you are trying to accomplish to your travel agency or the group sales department of any cruise line.

Get familiar with cruise itineraries. Most cruise lines have three-, four- and seven-night cruises (and longer). Can your organization make do with just one major meeting lasting an hour or so? If so, a four-day cruise with one sea day might be attractive. Need two or three, one-hour sessions? Your best bet may be a seven-day cruise with at least three sea days.

You also need to understand daily activities on board a ship. When a ship is in port, very few activities are planned so people can take advantage of excursions on land. On a sea day it is not uncommon to see 80 to 100 planned activities in the ship’s daily cruise newsletter.

Let’s combine your meeting needs and see how this can work with maybe a seven-night cruise with three sea days: Plan to have your attendees fly in the day before a cruise, say in September, because that is an off-season month for many cruise itineraries. That way, everyone will have time to make it to the ship and you’ll have the opportunity to hold a pre-cruise dinner meeting. Arrange to get your members to the ship by 11 a.m. Most cruise ships start their boarding process around noon. There are some (but not a lot) of activities planned on boarding day. Why not plan a meeting around 3 p.m. for an hour? By then your group would have had lunch and an opportunity to explore the ship, and it would be before the mandatory lifeboat drill all ships hold.

Then on your three sea days, arrange for a 9 a.m. meeting each day and limit it to one hour. While some cruise activities start at that time, the majority are scheduled later. If you need another time or two to meet for an hour, suggest a 2 p.m. meeting on a day the ship is in port. This will allow your group to get off the ship in the morning to see the destination, return to the ship for lunch, and attend your session before the ship sails and activities pick up again. Here are some other factors to consider:

Benefits

Your cruise fare includes the berth and your meals on board. A day on a cruise ship is actually less expensive than staying in a hotel and paying for your meals.

Depending on the size of your group, you may be entitled to a free cocktail reception.

You can arrange to have all your attendees sit together where guaranteed (not necessarily ‘free style’) seating is an option.

Everyone in your group will be able to get to your meetings within five minutes or less.

A complimentary berth is usually given when 16 people are booked with your group. When 32 people are booked, it often means a free room.

The cruise line usually arranges to have a cruise staff member (someone in guest relations) be your contact on board to make certain your meeting room is ready and any other needs are taken care of. A special venue such as a cruise ship does much to bring together any organization, build team spirit and guarantee fun at the same time.

Challenges

All cruise lines now require a U.S. passport, so make sure your attendees have theirs before boarding. If you add organization fees to the cost of the cruise, your members may discover they are paying more for their cruise than other people on board, so be sure they are aware of the addition. As the planner involved, you will need to make certain that all your attendees pay a deposit of hundreds of dollars months in advance and the final balance approximately 60 days before sailing.

Unlike a hotel, a single person occupying one stateroom on board a ship takes away the ability of the ship to sell that extra berth. So anyone traveling alone in your group has to pay 175 percent or more of the cost of the room. Your participants will have other expenses on board including gratuities (approximately $10 per person per day on board), beverages, ships’ excursions, etc. While ships have some audiovisual facilities they allow groups to use, many don’t have a lot of sophisticated multi-media or printing facilities on board, so be sure to check what is available.

On disembarkation day, it is nearly impossible to keep groups together, because cruise ships want to get everyone off quickly to prepare for the next group coming aboard. Everyone is excited about a cruise but when you consider that they may want to bring a significant other or a spouse along, this increases the cost of the cruise and could potentially limit the number of people attending your event on board a cruise ship. Cruising is a lot of fun and a very attractive option for a future national meeting of your organization. When you consider everything, is a cruise doable for your organization?

Joe Condrill is president of Overseas Brats, an organization of former military and overseas dependents, that’s based in Wichita, Kan. He also serves as a guest lecturer in the cruise industry, doing three or four cruise assignments annually.