Confused.com?

As a Cruise Consultant I rely heavily on having up to date cruise brochures with ship  deck plans and cabin details to hand and to be able to ‘Google’ a deck plan instantly

I was chatting to a client this week trying to locate the cabin number in her brochure and it made me realise just how over-complicated the cruise lines make the grades and categories, some ships have even numbered cabins on the port side and odd numbers on the starboard side – some lines are the other way around!

Not only does each line have up to 10 different grades of each type of cabin, all cruise lines have different category descriptions and depending which edition brochure  you have the same cabin number can even be a different grade or colour

I really struggle with the small print on the deck plans and the similar colours and I know what I’m looking for, it must be nearly impossible for those with less good eyesight!

Don’t even get me started with the on line deck plans where you can in theory zoom in or zoom out to see the position of the cabins, if you don’t have a magnifying glass you really don’t stand a chance

I think it is time for some simplicity and uniformity, wouldn’t it make more sense if all cruise lines used the same grading as airlines do for their seat classes and fare structure?

This whole situation is made worse with the cruise lines re-grading the cabins almost every year when the new brochures are launched, it could be easy to book the wrong cabin just by having a different years deck plan from what the client is looking at – luckily I have never done this but it is an accident waiting to happen!

I would like to see no more than 4 types of each cabin, forward or aft and on lower decks grading to the higher decks and more midships with straightforward descriptions and obvious differential in colours, surely this makes sense ?

What do you think? do you have a better grading idea? I would love to hear it!