Compagnie Française de Croisières (CFC)

We got the call from CFC to start this project, only 2-3 months before the desired go-live date. Launching a brand new cruise brand specific for the French market in such a short timeframe is no easy task. We managed to pull it off, working closely with the CFC leadership and ensuring efficiency of delivery. Working with the leadership team was a big driver in the speed of delivery, making decisions fast so that we could minimise any bottlenecks.

In just a few months, we put together a full stack of customer facing technology to enable CFC to go to market. This included:

• A flexible and powerful marketing site, fully integrated with the booking system.
• Direct-to-consumer bookings.
• B2B bookings, including different pricing models and group booking options.
• A powerful backend enabling full booking management.
• A shore excursion sales and management system, allowing for extra add-on sales revenue.
• CRM integration (Hubspot)
• A full reporting suite, covering all decision-making requirements.

Handling all pre-cruise revenue streams and booking management through systems Castus have built and maintained has been a key point in our relationship. Everything was handled by Castus.

We had been involved in the cruise industry for around a decade at the start of this project. We had also helped launch another start-up cruise line in the previous year, so we had a good idea of what we were getting ourselves into.

We knew there would be obstacles to overcome, stress and last-minute changes. Our goal was to deliver on time and bring as much calm to chaos as we could, through our experienced and knowledgeable team.

Some of the challenges we faced:

• Two pricing structures
  CFC decided early on that they wanted guests to have an option to pay for the cruise in full for a discount, but without the option to have a refund. Not only was this technically a challenge, but also a huge UX challenge to find an easy-to-understand way in which to communicate the offering to potential customers. 
  We did this by simplifying the journey as much as possible and showing the different options a little further down the booking journey. 
• A new team
  With CFC being a new start-up business, not everyone knew the usual terms used in cruise or the core business logic.
  When we work with a client, we like to think of ourselves as part of one big team. Castus and the client, together with a common goal. As the more experienced CFC team members were super-busy we were more than happy to help explain the various different elements that might have been fuzzy or unknown by the team members we worked with.
• The language barrier
  Whilst the cruise industry is generally an English-speaking industry, as English is the safety language onboard ships. This isn't always the case with the head offices based onshore.
  To help minimise any potential misunderstandings that could occur, we make sure that communication is backed up with diagrams and screen recordings to illustrate points or demonstrate system features. This is on top of having multiple people in the business who can speak French. 
• The short timeframe
  Would you book a holiday for next month? Probably not, as you are likely to already have your holidays planned for the next 6-12 months. Therefore, getting the systems live quickly means CFC have the best chance possible to maximise their booking curves and get ahead of the game.
  We helped make these short deadlines a reality by breaking the system down into absolute requirements for day one, with other features that are only needed post-booking to come shortly after. We also made sure that we had clear communication lines with the decision makers, in order to move quickly and not get decision bottlenecks.
• A new payment gateway
  Whilst working with an unknown payment gateway isn't anything particularly new to us. We had a challenge to overcome here, primarily due to the timeline.
  We managed to integrate with System Pay quickly and efficiently for the booking flow, closely followed by the balance payments system in the customer portal.