More than 50,000 cruises have been logged in the first week of The Cruise Globe, the world’s first digital platform that allows global travellers to accurately map out their entire cruise history,
This ultimate visual logbook allows users to see all their cruises in one place, as well as track, re-live and share their entire cruise history with, for the first time ever, total accuracy.
The Cruise Globe is the brainchild of friends Matthew Jones, Will Ellison and Emma Le Teace, all of whom have a shared love of travel, ships and the ocean and are the team behind the hugely successful The Cruise Maps, the world’s first personalised and entirely accurate print maps for cruise passengers.
Will trained in naval architecture and has 15 years’ experience building marine technology start-ups; Jones has eight years’ experience in building start-ups and both his parents worked for Cunard in the 1980s as a nurse and chief engineer on the QE2 and Countess; and Le Teace, who is better known as Emma Cruises, is one of the world’s biggest cruise content creators with her finger on the pulse when it comes to knowing what cruisers want.
Drawing on this vast experience and knowledge, they created this digital, interactive platform using historical AIS satellite ship tracking data to allow cruisers to log their entire cruise history on a map and then see all of their collective statistics in one place.
“Following months of research, we realised that what cruisers have been crying out for is an accurate record of exactly where they have been on all of their cruises, and to be able to share this information with family and friends,” Jones said.
“While there are countless apps that can be used to track flights and general travel, up until now nothing existed to allow cruisers to do this as AIS satellite tracking data often has gaps and cleaning it up is a time-consuming process.
“Thanks to Will’s knowledge and experience, and our hard-working data validation team, we are able to clean up the data and create a platform on which users can explore and share the 100% accurate statistics of their entire cruise history.”
Key features of The Cruise Globe
- Log, explore and share the exact routes of every one of your cruise journeys using AIS satellite tracking technology.
- See a full break-down of the statistics of your entire cruise history, including exact distances travelled.
- Re-live every port and landmark by ‘flying through’ your exact cruise route in 3D.
- Show your friends exactly where you visited by zooming in on ports in satellite view.
As a result of overwhelming initial demand, the number of data validation staff has already doubled from four to eight, and there is still plenty more to come, said Ellison.
“Now that The Cruise Globe has launched and we have the technology in place, we have plans to add live cruise ship movements, future cruises and river cruises by the end of the year, which will make us a one-stop destination for viewing your entire cruising experience, including tracking your friends and family in real time,” he said.
“We will also invest in developing the platform into an app, even though it is already mobile optimised and works really well on smart phones and tablets.”
Le Teace said there had been an incredible response to the launch of The Cruise Globe and they can’t wait to keep developing it.
“We know that cruisers love to look at their cruise stats and most people like to keep a written history of their travels in a notebook or on their computer,” she said. “With the launch of The Cruise Globe, we are giving them the means to really show off their cruise journeys visually and statistically with their entire cruise history all on one beautiful digital globe.”
