Determination of Seasonality Patterns in the Transport of Cruise Travellers Through Clustering Techniques

Abstract

The tourist attraction of a cruise itinerary is composed of the on board experience plus the shore-based experience. Due to the positive dynamism of the cruise industry since the beginning of the twenty-first century, cruise lines are driven to innovate to create new experiences that help maintain high demand rates. From the point of view of creating new experiences on land, cruise lines move their vessels from one destination region to another to maximise the vessel's occupancy and to offer itineraries with a wider variety of shore-based attractions. These new itinerary designs lead to alterations in the seasonality patterns of the neighbouring regions. In this work, the 17 most important cruise ports located in the northeast quadrant of the Atlantic Ocean are analysed to find groups of ports with homogeneous seasonality patterns using clustering techniques. The analysis showed two different seasonality patterns. Consequently, some implications to improve the use of the ports of both clusters are included.