Published on
August 13, 2025
City Cruises, the world’s leading provider of dining and sightseeing cruises, has teamed up with Medallia, the leader in customer and employee experience management, to improve the company’s digital interactions with passengers and collect useful insights from them. The collaboration is poised to optimize the customer experience, striving to improve satisfaction, eliminate friction points, and enhance customer loyalty across City Cruises’ extensive maritime hospitality offerings.
To enhance customer service standards, City Cruises is focused on digital innovation, demonstrating a willingness to keep pace with evolving customer service standards as the travel sector rebounds and demand for unique, meaningful experiences grows. City Cruises plans to utilize Medallia’s AI-powered platform to collect insights and feedback from passengers across all digital touchpoints, from booking to the onboard experience, enabling a seamless and frictionless process for customers.
The Increasing Need for Integrated Digital Experience
The collaboration of Medallia and City Cruises comes during a period of peak expectation for a customer’s digital tailored experience. City Cruises offers cruises across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. and looks to capitalize on evolving customer expectations. Within the travel and hospitality industries, there is a growing understanding of the importance of digital experiences, whether they be ticket purchase interfaces or customer service interactions that seamlessly integrate into the travel experience.
As shared by Kacy Roseberry, Vice President, E-Commerce and CRM at Hornblower Group (who owns City Cruises), the collaboration’s objectives have significant value: “Partnering with Medallia will allow City Cruises to listen to and act on the voices of our users, which elevates decision making to the users onboard and ensures the best experience for every passenger.” The collaboration looks to enable City Cruises to make evidence-based decisions that enhance service provisions and customer interaction across all digital interfaces.
Using Real-Time Information to Enhance Customer Experiences
An obvious advantage of our partnership with Medallia is the acquisition of real-time guest feedback, which is essential for ongoing enhancements to the customer experience. Medallia has integrated the various data touchpoints of City Cruises, which now gives the cruise operator a holistic view of customer sentiment and satisfaction. This helps the cruise operator discover and fix customer friction touchpoints, especially during the booking process and interactions with guests before boarding.
City Cruises can now respond to customer feedback, thanks to Medallia. Customers can now manage their bookings better through City Cruises’ user-friendly digital interfaces. The company is now able to manage user trends, real-time satisfaction measures, and service adjustments thanks to Medallia. The company can now eliminate service blockers, including slow website navigation and delayed customer communication.
Improving Onboard and Beyond Passenger Experience for City Cruises
For City Cruises, the journey does not begin and end at the passenger’s boarding point, but rather extends for the entire journey. Understanding digital touchpoints and their impact starts with the booking and continues throughout the cruise. City Cruises hopes to leverage Medallia’s platform to monitor core experience and touchpoints such as booking, boarding, cruising, and post-cruise engagement, ensuring the entire journey is smooth and delightful for the passengers.
“Initial digital engagement plays a vital role in shaping the tone for customers’ onboard experiences,” Roseberry said. City Cruises aims to maximize customer engagement and satisfaction digitally for onboard experiences, whether it is cruising for leisure, commemorating a milestone, or sightseeing. With Medallia’s technologies, the company will be equipped with the information needed for advanced and timely action addressing problems long before passengers step onboard.
Improved technology and added fleet services to meet customer expectations
An onboard experience-enhancing fleet upgrade is now under the City Cruises modernization scheme. These changes are complemented by the new partnership with Medallia, as passenger feedback is shaping the development of features and services.
City Cruises’ modern fleet now features new ships equipped with advanced amenities that enhance the onboard experience as well as the digital booking experience. With the ability to monitor feedback, the company is able to adapt fleet management and enhance operations to meet guests’ needs, improving the experience for everyone onboard.
Fostering Partnerships for Increased Career Mobility and Business Loyalty
In addition to increasing digital engagement, City Cruises is focusing on strengthening key associate partnerships with regional airlines and other members of the hospitality sector. With the help of its partners, Improved Medallia, City Cruises will be able to enhance its communication systems with other key airlines, local tour operators, and regional tourism boards, improving the overall coordination.
In addition, the Medallia integration serves a critical function, ensuring that passengers are not simply happy with the trip they are on, but will also want to come again in the future. Equipped with knowledge on what drives exceptional customer satisfaction, City Cruises is positioned to tailor its offerings, strengthening customer loyalty and increasing repeat bookings.
A Bright Future for Digital Transformation in the Maritime Industry
In the context of the maritime industry, the partnership between City Cruises and Medallia illustrates a growing shift towards digital innovation. In response to evolving passenger expectations, City Cruises and similar cruise line operators are adopting technologies designed to facilitate a more streamlined, bespoke service.
Roseberry emphasized, “At City Cruises, we are not just enhancing our services today; we are fundamentally rethinking how future generations of passengers will engage with our services. With Medallia, we are creating an innovative, responsive environment that enables our guests to optimize their experiences with us.”
In tandem with Medallia, City Cruises aims to provide more remote guided passenger interaction and works towards its corporate objectives of more bespoke cruise services. These include customized cruise schedules, guided excursions related to the cruise during the regions of interest, and participation in onboard activities designed for them individually. It is expected that with the upgrading of cruise ships and systems, passengers will enjoy enhanced and customized experiences during their trips.
Conclusion: Shaping the Future of Hospitality at Sea
The partnership formed between City Cruises and Medallia marks a positive and bold step forward in the field of maritime hospitality. City Cruises has harnessed technology, real-time data analytics, and implemented iterative service enhancements, thus creating a new milestone for customer experience management in the business of cruising. The company’s strong focus on digital transformation, upgrading the fleet, and advancing customer satisfaction positions City Cruises as the first mover in creating smooth and delightful cruising experiences for onboard passengers.
To satisfy the demands of an increasingly discerning traveler demographic, City Cruises is committed to market listening and thus will continue to be a leader in maritime hospitality. The company is enhancing its maritime offerings and is driven to design a new business model where the satisfaction of its guests will be the center of focus.
(Source: City Cruises, U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Maritime Commission)
