Can Cruise.Me change cruise booking?

Have you ever booked a cruise online? Considering all the things we do with a few touches, booking a cruise is still a bit of a technical challenge. This is the problem Cruise.Me hopes to solve. After a long build up, the company finally rolled out its site and is receiving very positive feedback.

Cruise.Me put an emphasis on better content, mobile interfaces and a process that allows bookers to search in new parameters. If you want to search by price, you can do that too.

Even though they have built a great interface, Cruise.Me still has some marketing challenges ahead. The majority of cruise passengers have relationships with travel agents and are successfully booking cruises without Cruise.Me. What will drive them to switch to more self booking? How will the older demographic even find Cruise.Me? What is to stop the major cruise sellers -- the large agencies and the cruise companies themselves -- from copying Cruise.Me's interface and selling the cruises themselves?

Cruise.Me is not perfect but it is an important company for the industry. We need new innovations and new approaches. Hopefully Cruise.Me can drive that innovation.

No more cruise to nowhere

Cruise Critic and USA Today's Cruise Log have the latest on the end of "cruises to nowhere." Although the law has been on the books for years, the United States is cracking down on these short cruises that depart from a U.S. port, sail into international waters and then return to the United States without a stop in a foreign country. Ships registered in the U.S. can still do these short trips, but the vast majority of ships from the major cruise companies are registered elsewhere.

This is good news for the Bahamas. As cruise companies adjust their 2016 schedules to the new enforcement, a few of these itineraries will now probably add a short stay in the island nation near Florida.