Cruise Travel Leaders Develop the Most Advanced OTA-Style Web Platform

Unique in the market, CruisingStore.com empowers prospective cruisers with insightful and educational content, an industry-wide loyalty program, real-time product support, and special incentives for all audiences – all powered with the most advanced technology. 

MIAMI, FL – Drawing on the time-honored expertise of cruise industry innovators and powered by revolutionary technology, Milepost Group Inc. (MILEPOST) today introduced a new online cruise travel platform poised to evolve the cruise industry – CruisingStore.com.  Scheduled to launch in January 2017, CruisingStore.com will innovate the cruise vertical as the most technologically advanced, consumer focused, and supplier friendly OTA (online travel agency) in the cruise space, featuring: deep data insights and a novel, shared-customer distribution model for cruise line partners; opportunities for travel agents to earn extra income and rewards; and, an unmatched customer experience with proprietary tools, resources, and personalization that enables travelers to create their ultimate, customized cruise vacation.

 "CruisingStore.com will solve many long-standing and intractable distribution challenges in the cruise industry,” said Vincent Cirel, Founder, Vice-Chairman and CEO of CruisingStore.com.  “We are developing unique distribution opportunities via innovative partnerships with cruise lines, while delivering a customized customer journey beyond any other available in the cruise segment of travel today. Our primary objectives are to educate and inform the consumer as to the true value of cruise vacations, while giving suppliers direct and immediate access to their consumers."

Key Alliances

MILEPOST is collaborating with high-profile marketing and technical organizations in the travel industry, including Deloitte, Worldmedia Interactive and Revelex.  Deloitte is delivering advanced features and processes to CruisingStore.com, providing the ultimate in personalization and intelligent, digitally-driven engagement.  Worldmedia brings to bear its successful marketing and advertising track record in the cruise and travel spheres. Revelex has long been a leader in full service website development, serving hundreds of clients worldwide and connecting to cruise lines worldwide.

Unique in the market, CruisingStore.com empowers prospective cruisers with insightful and educational content, an industry-wide loyalty program, real-time product support, and special incentives for all audiences – all powered with the most advanced technology.  The company's proprietary technology platform is intelligently designed to transform and stimulate demand for cruises in ways other distributors cannot, due to fragmented technologies and business processes focused on maintaining "ownership" of the consumer.

 “Our goal in building CruisingStore.com is to provide completely new ways to shop for and compare cruises,” said Kevin Sheehan, Non-Executive Chairman of CruisingStore.com. “We are taking the whole concept of cruise travel to the next level and providing consumers and cruise lines with a ground-breaking platform in CruisingStore.com that is certain to shake up the entire cruise marketplace.”

Strategic Relationship with Deloitte Consulting LLP

CruisingStore.com is a platform built on big data and will provide deep customer insights that will allow the online brand to customize content and products based on customer preferences.  This valuable data will also be available to CruisingStore.com's cruise line partners as part of standard distribution agreements at no cost.

"This collaboration with Deloitte will present a new level of deep, data-driven, first-of-its kind customer analytics functionality, said Cirel. “Not only will it give us the edge in providing the best and most customized user experience, but it will also give suppliers a level of consumer insight never before available to the travel industry.”

"Utilizing our extensive program management and system integration experience, coupled with deep knowledge in transforming travel industry technologies for clients, we plan to bring our ‘travel accelerators’ – a future-state, e-commerce ecosystem – to the entire cruise industry under the Cruisingstore.com umbrella,” said Siva Kantamneni, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and technology leader for travel, hospitality and leisure.

 Cruise Experts at the Helm

Spearheading execution of the company's core tenets as President and Chief Operating Officer is Steve Watson, who has more than a 25-year background in all areas of marketing for global cruise, travel, tourism, and hospitality companies. Founder, CEO, and Vice-Chairman is Vincent Cirel, former CIO for Norwegian Cruise Line, who additionally served in key management posts for Regent Seven Seas Cruises and Grand Expeditions and boasts 20-plus+ years of experience in enterprise operations and turnarounds, IT, and solution engineering. Serving as Chief Development Officer is Dwain Wall, whose career highlights include serving as Senior VP for Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA).  Tom Grasse joins the team as EVP and Chief Marketing Officer with an impressive background working for enterprises both large and mid-sized, from the venerable McCann-Erickson to Norwegian cruise Line.  Leading the development of the future luxury yacht product is Jim Gilbert, a well-known leader in the yachting business.

Best-of-Breed Functionality and Partnerships

To create the best experience across the board, CruisingStore.com has developed partnerships and alliances with renowned specialists: 

• Revelex Corporation, with more than 15 years of innovation experience in travel distribution, is powering CruisingStore.com's back-end booking technology, featuring API connections to 40-plus+ global cruise lines, which allows CruisingStore.com to seamlessly and efficiently integrate with the reservation systems of all major cruise suppliers.
• Long-tenured, award-winning, and travel-focused marketing agency, Worldmedia Interactive has partnered with CruisingStore.com for long-term marketing strategy, agency services, on-site branding, and customer acquisition.
• CruisingStore.com has contracted with one of the leading providers of custom content solutions dedicated to the global travel industry with the goal of delivering unique and substantive content to the cruise vacation consumer, supplementing CruisingStore.com’s own large- scale initiatives around user-generated content and social media interactions.
• CruisingStore.com has already signed new distribution agreements with many of the world’s largest and leading cruise suppliers, and is in various stages of completion with all other major suppliers, representing over 95% of global cruise industry product.
• Salt Lake City, UT- based Needle will provide the product support platform for prospective consumers with access to both existing cruise consumers as well as product- certified travel agents. The Needle technology platform will also greatly enhance CruisingStore.com’s organic search placement, thereby lowering overall SEO costs while more specifically matching consumer queries to proper content.
• Also joining the CruisingStore.com family will be Galaxy Travel & Cruises, LLC, which is being acquired to provide more traditional travel agent services for the upscale luxury brands for whose consumers might want a more traditional, high-touch experience.

 About CruisingStore.com

In pre-launch phase, CruisingStore.com is being designed as the most technologically advanced and content rich online shopping, planning, collaborating, and booking cruise travel platform poised to transform the cruise industry.  CruisingStore.com features a unique, shared customer distribution model with cruise line partners, real-time product support, and deep data functionality for the ultimate personalized customer experience. Headquartered in Miami, Florida, the company is steered by cruise industry experts and technology innovators lead by former CIO of Norwegian Cruise Line, Vincent Cirel as Vice-Chairman and CEO.  For more information, please visit www.CruisingStore.com.

 About Milepost Group Inc.

Headquartered in Miami, Florida, MILEPOST is a global technology company and parent of CruisingStore.com.  MILEPOST’s technology consulting services are primarily focused on cloud-based business solutions and technology products to tenured mid-market companies within established vertical industries. For additional details about MILEPOST or its wholly owned subsidiary visit MilepostInc.com or CruisingStore.com.