If you are new to our industry or looking for your first job onboard, it can be a little confusing trying to understand how the cruise retail industry works, as it is not immediately obvious.
So, in this blog we will do our best to try to give you a little insight into how it works and who is who, so you can recognize the main players.
Ok, let's start with the big picture. Most cruise retail operations onboard cruise ships are not run by the cruise line. Instead they are run by a concessionaire / partner who will operate the retail shops on behalf of a cruise line. When you are onboard the ship you would think that the shops are part of the cruise line, but in fact the concessionaire will operate them because of their specialist skill in retailing. Not all cruise lines operate with concessionaires, and some manage the retail themselves. So, in this blog let's take you through the who's who of concessionaires and cruise lines (in-house), and by the end hopefully you will understand a little bit more about who runs what!
So, here is our who's who list of the cruise retail industry....
HARDING +
Type of operator: Concessionaire
Harding +, is a British company with headquarters based near Bristol, but also with regional hubs in Miami and Sydney. The largest cruise retailer currently, Harding+ works with 16 cruise brand partners across the globe, including more than 90 cruise ships and 300 onboard shops. Cruise line partners include large ship operators such as Princess Cruises, Carnival Cruise Line, P&O Cruises, Cunard, Marella Cruises; as well as smaller luxury / expedition ship operators such as Viking Ocean Cruises, Hurtigruten, Regent Seven Seas, Fred Olsen and Oceania Cruises.
2. STARBOARD CRUISE SERVICES
Type of operator: Concessionaire
Starboard Cruise Services has over 65 years of years of history in the travel retail sector starting in 1958. Today, the American company with headquarters in Miami is one of the largest cruise retail operators in the world, with sister company Onboard Media, also providing port shopping and marketing solutions to the global cruise industry. Starboard along with their luxury division currently operates on 91 ships across 14 cruise brand partners with over 750 different brand partners. Large cruise line partners include Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises, Carnival Cruises, Resort World Cruises and Holland America Line. Smaller / luxury cruise line partners include Virgin Voyages, Azamara, Ritz-Carlton, Silversea and Crystal Cruises.
3. AVOLTA
Type of operator: Concessionaire
Avolta is one of the largest travel retailers in the world operating across all continents and specifically in a number of major airports globally. Consisting of companies such as Dufry, Autogrill, HMS Host, Nuance and World Duty Free, Avolta is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland with offices across the world. In the cruise industry, Avolta (or Dufry Cruise Services) operates as the major concessionaire on Norweigan Cruise Line with nearly all the ships in the fleet, alongside some ships in the Carnival Cruise Line fleet. Avolta also has Colombian Emeralds as part of its brand portfolio which is used to augment some of their onboard / downtown port shopping operation. Alongside this, they operate the port shops in destinations such as Cozumel which helps to offer an onboard / onland operation mix.
4. HEINEMANN
Type of operator: Concessionaire
Gebr. Heinemann and their subsidary Heinemann Americas, cruise retail services can be found across a number of cruise ships. As one of the world's leading travel retail companies, operating across the globe they operate in a number of major airports such as Frankfurt, Istanbul and Sydney alongside inflight, cruise and with a number of wholesale partners. Heinemann is a German family owned company with headquarters in Hamburg and regional hubs in Miami, Singapore and Sydney. In the cruise industry, Heinemann operates as a cruise line retail operator on Royal Caribbean, Mein Schiff and soon to be launched, Aroya Cruises in Saudi Arabia. They also provide wholesale partner services for a number of the other cruise retail operators.
5. EFFY
Type of operator: Concessionaire
Effy jewelry is a family-owned jewerly company headquarted in New York City, who have been selling jewelry onboard cruise ships for many years but in the past 8 or so years have started as a concessionaire operator onboard a number of cruise ships offering their jewelry ranges in dedicated boutiques. Today, Effy has dedicated jewelry shops on Princess, Royal Caribbean, Holland America, Carnival Cruise Line and MSC. Effy also runs a number of full cruise charters to their most loyal customers on cruise lines such as Holland America.
6. MSC CRUISES
Type of Operator: In-house
MSC Cruises is a Swiss family-owned cruise line with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland with regional offices across the world. MSC operates 25 cruise ships across 2 brands, MSC Cruises and Explora Journeys across the globe. It is also unique in the cruise retail industry as being the biggest cruise line operating its own retailing operation with over 200 boutiques across their fleet. Across a large number of categories, MSC caters to al wide range of nationalities and markets with their onboard retail offering. The rapid growth of MSC in the past years has seen it become the fastest growing cruise line, now 3rd in terms of guests carried.
7. DIAMONDS INTERNATIONAL
Type of Operator: Concessionaire
Diamonds International is by the largest port shopping luxury jewelry operator in the Caribbean with a vast network of boutiques across most of the islands and ports. In recent years they have started to open some boutiques on a few cruise ships with Disney Cruise Line and Sun Princess their current portfolio. Famed for their Crown of Light diamonds, Diamonds International is showing a co-ordinated approach between onboard and onland operation in the US cruise market.
8. DISNEY CRUISE LINE
Type of Operator: In-house
Disney Cruise Line operates a fleet of 5 cruise ships, with another 3 to come in the next 3 years, including the Singapore-based Disney Adventure. Disney being a huge operator of own-brand merchandise across its network of stores and theme parks around the world takes their experience onto their cruise line fleet. Currently, the majority of their onboard boutiques are run in-house across their different categories focused specifically on the Disney guest.
9. BELLARRI
Type of Operator: Concessionaire
Bellarri jewelry currently has a number of it's concessionaire jewelry stores on Regent Seven Seas and Oceania Cruises. Headquartered in Scottsdale, USA, this operator is famed for very artistic and creative luxury pieces.
10. CHINA DUTY FREE GROUP CRUISE SERVICES (CDFGCS)
Type of Operator: Concessionaire
China Duty Free Group operate on a number of cruise ships that are based in the China cruise market. Included in these are the newly launched Chinese built ship Adora Magic City run by Adora Cruises. The shops on this ship are the largest currently in the cruise retail industry with a large selection of brands and merchandise in a large purposely designed onboard setup.
11. AIDA CRUISES
Type of Operator: In-house
Along with MSC, Aida is another major cruise line that runs its own retail operation. Aida cruise line is the largest German specific cruise line operator with headquarters in Rostock, Germany. The line currently has 11 ships tailored exclusively for German cruises. On Aida cruises are a number of bespokely designed shops for their passengers where the experience and knowledge of the cruise operator really shines through. Not only this, Aida is one of the few cruise lines to operate its own online shop for guests once they have disembarked.
CONCLUSION
There are of course 2 important things to know about this list. The first that it is always changing, so we will do our best to update this list but bear in mind that it is a continously shifting set of contracts, so to keep track of them all is always a challenge. And the second is that there are many cruise ships not in this list, such is the vast size of the global cruise industry, so here we have only covered the major players.
There are many opportunities across the cruise retail industry with so many different operators across the global fleet. If you are ready to start your cruise retail journey, then we are here to do our best to support you.
If you are interested to be part of our job database, then simply visit our recruitment page to register your interest as and when jobs become available.
Let's sail together!
Such a very informative post. Thank you so much ❤️.
Thanks for the information. helpful!