Study On The Service Marketing Strategy For Costa Cruise Ship In China Market

Cruise is a luxurious ship that sails in water and equipped with various living and entertainment facilities, mainly for the travel and vacation. Cruise is also entitled as"Luxury Hotel on the Sea". Cruise travel is not so popular in China as in western countries. With the more frequent international communication, cruise is going into our sight. In recent years, cruise has begun to visit quite often at Chinese coastal ports like Shanghai, Tianjin, Xiamen, Shenzhen, benefiting from China's economy and politics steady development.Service is significant in cruise company's prestige and management. As a pioneer cruise company that entered into China market, Costa has been cultivating the market and introducing the cruise vacation conception. Costa has been striving for the excellent service all the time, but since they stand in China in a short time and has not yet acquainted with Chinese port soft and hard environment and culture, which come up with a challenge to the company service. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze Costa cruise service and improve the cruise service marketing, in order to provide more careful service and gain customer's satisfaction and loyalty, and promote company image and prestige, which is also this article's significance.With Costa cruise and China rising cruise market as background, the thesis's research emphasizes on the cruise service marketing. Through the analysis on the status quo of China's cruise market and Costa cruise service, the thesis makes a deep research on the major aspects of cruise service such as customer service, dinning and drinking, shore excursion, port operation, staff training and so on and provides strategies for the service enhancement based on the theory of service quality gap model and service marketing 7Ps combination. The research also considers the cruise environmental characteristic and passenger and crew's specific psychology herein. By the research on the Costa cruise service marketing, the thesis points out how to improve the cruise service in order to gain passenger's preference, and will be of benefit to the cruise company prestige and competence enhancement.