Product and service delivery satisfaction among North American cruise passengers

Although researchers have, during the past decade, become increasingly interested in customer satisfaction and service quality issues, very little of the research has been devoted to the tourist industry. The cruise line industry, which is among the fastest growing sectors of the leisure market, has hardly received any research attention. This paper discusses the importance of the cruise product and service delivery within the context of some of the unique characteristics of the cruise line industry, and presents the results of an exploratory study which examined passengers' satisfaction with a number of cruise product and service delivery components. The results of the study show that, overall, passengers' expectations were met or exceeded but there were key product and service delivery areas which provided cruise ship guests with the most satisfaction. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.