Why large cruise brands build their own booking platforms
Large cruise groups increasingly treat “booking” as the front door to a much bigger, on-board digital ecosystem. When your product includes keyless cabin access, cashless payments, location-aware service, dining, excursions, loyalty, and a mobile app that has to work across shipboard networks, a generic, off-the-shelf booking engine quickly becomes a constraint. That is why the biggest players invest in proprietary platforms: they can connect pre-cruise planning to on-board experience in a way that is hard for competitors to copy, and that can translate into higher guest satisfaction and higher on-board spend.
Cruise “booking” is not just a booking
Cruise retailing typically bundles far more than a cabin. It often includes flights, pre and post stays, shore excursions, dining packages, and on-board activities. Even off-the-shelf cruise reservation platforms market themselves as being able to “seamlessly book the cruise experience” across air travel, on-board activities, and shore excursions.
That breadth is exactly the problem: the more of the experience you want to stitch together end-to-end, the more integration and data consistency you need.
What the biggest cruise lines are actually building
Princess Cruises (Carnival Corporation): a proprietary guest platform that spans ship and shore
Princess MedallionClass uses the OceanMedallion device, which transmits an encrypted guest ID to the Ocean guest experience platform. Princess also describes an IoT-style approach where the Medallion connects guests and crew through sensors and readers around the ship to enable touchless, personalised experiences.
Crucially for “competitive advantage”, Carnival Corporation has described the Ocean Guest Experience Platform as proprietary, and has stated it is exclusive to Princess Cruises.
Royal Caribbean: wearable identity and payments tied to the on-board account
Royal Caribbean’s WOW Bands use RFID to unlock stateroom doors and enable on-board purchases (bars, shops, lounges).
That is not “just” a nice-to-have. It is identity, access control, and payments. Those are core platform capabilities that influence how you design booking, check-in, customer accounts, and on-board revenue capture.
Why proprietary platforms create advantage (and why off-the-shelf struggles)
1) One guest identity, from booking to boarding to bar tab
Once a cruise line has a persistent digital identity (account, reservation, wearable, app), it can remove friction at every step and still keep everything tied back to the guest’s on-board account. Princess and its partners describe OceanMedallion-enabled capabilities such as keyless stateroom access, streamlined embarkation, and frictionless payments.
2) Personalisation becomes real-time, not just “marketing personalisation”
Princess’ MedallionClass is designed to recognise guests in different locations around the ship via sensors and readers, supporting personalised service and interactive experiences.
That kind of experience is difficult to deliver if your booking layer, customer profile, and shipboard systems are stitched together loosely with batch integrations.
3) Faster iteration on new revenue products
If the cruise line owns the platform, it can launch new paid features quickly: priority services, dining inventory models, targeted packages, or in-app offers. Carnival’s Ocean Compass concept was positioned as a digital concierge available online, on smart devices, on-board kiosks, stateroom TVs, interactive surfaces, and crew devices, which is essentially a cross-channel commerce surface, not just a brochure.
Where off-the-shelf still fits (and why smaller lines choose it)
Off-the-shelf reservation systems do get adopted, particularly by smaller and mid-sized operators who need speed-to-market and proven functionality. For example, UnCruise Adventures publicly announced selecting Versonix Seaware as its reservation software to improve its booking process and operations.
The pattern you see in the market is simple:
Smaller lines buy platforms to reduce cost and delivery risk.
Large groups build and extend proprietary ecosystems because the digital experience is part of the product and a differentiator, especially once you include shipboard identity, payments, access, and real-time personalisation.
What this means for travel tech leaders (and vendors)
If you are selling into cruise, assume you are plugging into a platform, not replacing it.
Prioritise:
API-first integration with identity, loyalty, payments, and mobile app surfaces
Real-time event feeds (check-in, on-board spend, dining inventory, location-aware service)
Offline or degraded-mode resilience (ships are not always “perfect internet” environments)
Security and privacy by design (encrypted identifiers and strong platform controls are now table stakes)
This is also why a technology review needs to focus on end-to-end flows, not individual tools, which aligns with my positioning around tailored reviews and recommendations rather than generic implementations.
Plain-language summary
Big cruise brands do not just sell cabins. They sell a connected on-board experience.
That experience depends on platforms that handle identity, payments, access, and personalisation.
Some of the most visible examples (Princess MedallionClass) are explicitly described as proprietary and exclusive, which is a direct signal of “competitive advantage” intent.
Off-the-shelf reservation systems still win in parts of the market, especially for smaller lines, but the largest groups tend to build or heavily customise because differentiation lives in the integrated experience.
