Case Study: DTS's 'Ship Partner' Puts Queen Mary 2 On Course

Specifically, the firm sought a system that could capture and disseminate embarkation and disembarkation data in accordance with international security regulations. The ship also required a cashless billing environment that could interface with the variety of point-of-sale systems throughout the ship that enable passengers to use identification cards as room keys and to pay for digital services delivered to their rooms.

Ideally, the cruise liner wanted one system that could do it all.

Cunard had done a previous lengthy RFP process requesting similar services for the Queen Elizabeth 2 and so knew exactly where to turn this time around: Discovery Travel Systems (DTS), Alexandria, Va. DTS designed a proprietary system based on the OpenEdge business platform from Bedford, Mass.-based vendor the Progress Company.

"A vessel, unlike a hotel, is unique in that our passengers can embark or disembark at any port, and they require amenities that you wouldn't otherwise afford them if you weren't at sea for days at a time," said John Broughan, DTS president. "We knew exactly what we had to do to make this system work."

The system, fittingly dubbed Ship Partner, revolves around passenger photo identification cards that double as room keys and on-board credit cards. Information embedded in magnetic stripes on these cards is linked to a customized manifesting application that tracks the whereabouts of each of the 2,300 passengers on board at a given time. The application also allows for remote registration, simplifying the physical precruise registration process that usually takes hours before a ship sets sail. Once the Ship Partner program has collected all pertinent passenger registration information, it can export the data for local authorities at every port of call.

Throughout the voyage when passengers embark and disembark to explore each port, the system monitors their whereabouts, keeping track of the location of every passenger at all times. In today's age of heightened security, Cunard Director of IT Dick Beliveau described this application as "critical" for the safety of the ship.

"Government regulations mandate that we have an accurate passenger manifest at every point [of the cruise]," he said, adding that failure to do so can add up to fines in excess of $50,000 per incident. "With DTS, we [are] able to collect necessary passenger information and avoid potentially stiff penalties."

Ship Partner's functionality doesn't just stop at tracking passengers. Cunard wanted DTS to facilitate a cashless environment, and by linking passenger credit card information with the ship's billing systems, DTS did just that.

When the ship sets sail for its Jan. 12 maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., passengers will receive identification cards when embarking for the first time. A swipe of the card into the ship's computer terminal will activate the passenger's billing account, enabling the passenger to use the ID cards as he or she would use a credit card anywhere on board.

Reconciling billing information with outside vendors at the end of a voyage,a process that once took a night of batch processing,is now a simple automated endeavor because Ship Partner integrates with multiple billing systems. Though Cunard declines to reveal specific figures regarding ROI, Beliveau said that the time savings in this area alone has enabled the company to reduce the number of ship cashiers by nearly half.

At DTS, Broughan was a bit more forthcoming with statistics, estimating that the overall savings Ship Partner has brought the cruise liner is in the "millions."

These high savings don't surprise Henry Harteveldt, principal analyst at Forrester and an expert on travel industry technology. "Cunard doesn't do things lightly," he said. "A ship like the QM2 is nothing without technology, and the DTS solution is a big part of that equation."