Latest port study reveals the criteria structuring cruise lines decisions of which port to use for home-porting with input from cruise lines, ports and cruise terminal operators, and stakeholders.
Cruise ports seek to secure cruise calls, with most of them competing to accommodate the most profitable activities of all: home-porting. Meanwhile, the uninterrupted growth of cruise activities until the COVID-19 days was based on the evolution of renewed business strategies that alter home-porting selection criteria.
The latest port study by PortEconomics members Aimilia Papachristou, Thanos Pallis, and George Vaggelas examines the criteria structuring cruise lines’ decisions of which port to use for home-porting.
The port study is published at the well respected scholarly journal Research in Transportation Business & Management and is freely available online until December 26, 2020, in the following link.
The study uses a database constructed with input from 109 cruise lines, ports and cruise terminal operators, and stakeholders. Methodologically, it does so via a survey and the analysis (descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA, and Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric test) of the 109 replies received. The collected empirical data reveal:
- (a) the hierarchy of the home-porting selection criteria;
- (b) the variance of the perspectives of cruise lines, cruise ports, and other stakeholders; and
- (c) the role of the experience of cruise professionals in shaping their assessment of the significance of each criterion –
- (d) comparison of the findings with those of past researches identifies the evolution and potential alterations of this hierarchy of home-porting selection criteria.
