Abstract
PurposeCruising is one of the industries most susceptible to the current COVID-19 health crisis, due to the closed environment and the contacts between cruisers and crewmembers. This study aims to understand if the perceived crowding and the health risk perception related to the pandemic situation might threaten passengers’ intentions to cruise. The study also examines corporate reputation and trust, as well as social motivation and self-confidence, as possible predictors of consumers’ intention to cruise.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on the development of a structured questionnaire submitted online via social media. Overall, 553 individuals’ responses were used for understanding the factors that can affect consumers’ intention to cruise by performing several regression models.FindingsThe results show that the perceived crowding related to the pandemic does not seem to influence people’s intention to cruise. On the contrary, trust in the cruise company, corporate reputation, cruisers’ self-confidence and research of social motivation are positive predictors of intention to cruise, thus reducing the perceived risk’s deterring impact. The importance of such factors differs in respect of repeat and not repeat cruisers.Practical implicationsThe study presents several managerial implications as it analyses the variables that could help cruise management cope better with COVID-19’s negative impact.Originality/valueDespite the severity of COVID-19’s impact on the cruise industry, no studies have yet focussed on how the current pandemic situation may influence customers’ intention to cruise in the future.
Highlights
Cruise companies cover all profiles of contemporary hospitality management: marketing strategies, human resource planning and development, operations management, corporate strategies, accounting and communication (Chua et al, 2017; Jones et al, 2017; Penco et al, 2019; Raub and Streit, 2006)
Taking the current COVID-19 situation into account, this study aims to answer to the following research question: during the COVID-19 pandemic era, which factors influence consumers’ intention to cruise? By focussing on the aforementioned issues, our study contributes to the extant literature in several ways
5.1 Conclusions This study shed light on how cruisers perceive and react to the COVID-19 pandemic event, in terms of their intention to go on a cruise in future
Summary
Cruise companies cover all profiles of contemporary hospitality management: marketing strategies, human resource planning and development, operations management, corporate strategies, accounting and communication (Chua et al, 2017; Jones et al, 2017; Penco et al, 2019; Raub and Streit, 2006). Within the hospitality industry, cruising is one of the most susceptible industries to the current COVID-19 health crisis, and associated with amplified safety and security risks for its passengers and crewmembers (Gössling et al, 2020). Previous critical events that had an enormous impact on humans and the environment are well-documented (Mileski et al, 2014; Penco et al, 2019; Tarlow et al, 2012), especially when these were due to health risks (LiuLastres et al, 2019; Liu et al, 2016; Mizrachi and Fuchs, 2016). When the cruise ship Diamond Princess’s passengers were diagnosed with COVID-19, the vessel offered a rare opportunity to understand features of the new virus that were hard to investigate in the wider population (Gallego and Font, 2020; Sharma and Nicolau, 2020)
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