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Navigating the Future: CLIA’s Global Digital Presence as a Leading Cruise Industry Resource

Digital Strategy

Project Goals

Throughout this digital strategy initiative, fusionSpan engaged in extensive research interviews with diverse stakeholders including CLIA business units, cruise company executives, executive partners, travel agents, and cruise journalists.

The objective was to gain insights into user expectations when visiting the CLIA website and member portal, with a focus on optimizing CLIA’s digital presence and developing tech strategies to better serve its diverse audiences. CLIA engaged with this research effort in order to support a large scale website redesign project, understanding the importance of walking into the RFP and vendor selection process armed with a deep understanding of their audiences and digital strategy.

Services We Provided

  • Stakeholder Analysis
  • Enterprise Analysis
  • User Interviews
  • Personas
  • Card Sorting
  • Sitemap Development
  • Process Diagrams
  • Wireframes
  • Digital Strategy Recommendations
Key Focus Areas
Comprehensive Stakeholder Engagement:

fusionSpan engaged in thorough interviews to gain deep insights into the goals, challenges, and aspirations of CLIA's diverse stakeholders. The project was composed of a total of 33 individual interviews across six audiences (travel agents, travel agencies, executives, executive partners, government officials, and journalists). This comprehensive approach ensured a holistic understanding of stakeholder needs and expectations.

Visionary Digital Strategy Development:

The project aimed to define a visionary roadmap for CLIA's digital future, aligning stakeholder insights with industry best practices. This strategic alignment was crucial in enhancing CLIA's overall digital presence and improving user experience across its platforms.

User Experience Enhancement:

Through rigorous user research and usability testing, fusionSpan identified critical pain points and gathered insights to enhance the navigation, content accessibility, and overall user interface of CLIA's digital platforms. This approach focused on improving user satisfaction and ensuring intuitive interaction across different user segments utilizing various UX design tools such as surveys, card sorting, personas, sitemap, wireframes, process diagrams, and strategy analysis.

Content Strategy and Audience Segmentation:

fusionSpan developed a comprehensive content strategy, including migrating separate regional websites into a single site with regional sections tailored to geographical relevance. The strategy also involves ensuring users have multiple ways to find the information they need - by topic, type of content, or region. This strategy aimed to deliver targeted information and resources effectively to diverse audiences, such as travel agents/agencies and executives, enhancing content relevance and user engagement.

These initiatives were strategically designed to align CLIA's digital strategy with the needs and expectations of its stakeholders, fostering enhanced engagement, accessibility, and usability within the cruise industry.

Project Challenges

CLIA’s digital strategy required a multifaceted approach to balance organizational needs. Our methodology involved analyzing pain points, reviewing goals, and gaining a thorough understanding of business processes

The scope of the project

fusionSpan evaluated CLIA's website and member portal infrastructure. Our approach involved a heuristic analysis, internal stakeholder interviews, surveys, card sorts, external stakeholder interviews, and content audits. We gathered demographic insights to understand needs and behaviors and formulate strategic recommendations. The project's scale was massive, particularly in addressing the executive audience's strategic concerns. Additionally, the consolidation of 15 separate websites into 1 or 2 unified platforms posed a significant challenge, requiring innovative solutions to streamline and optimize CLIA's digital presence.

Regional Websites Disparity:

CLIA's regional websites for North America, Europe, Brazil, Australia, and Alaska operate independently with disparate strategies and content, failing to present a unified brand and message under the CLIA umbrella. This fragmentation disrupts seamless user navigation and diminishes CLIA's global coherence and effectiveness.

Website Serving Different Audiences:

The current structure of CLIA's website blends and presents information aimed at distinct audiences, such as executives and travel agents. This approach does not effectively cater to the unique informational needs and preferences of each audience segment, lacking a cohesive and targeted user experience.

Understanding Audience Needs:

CLIA felt they did not fully understand the needs of each of their key audiences, and wanted to ensure that going into a full-scale website redesign they knew the goals, motivations, and expectations each audience needed for the new site. They were also concerned that key member audiences were underutilizing CLIA's benefits, and wanted to ensure that the new website highlighted these key member benefits.

Overall, CLIA’s enhanced digital strategy aims to optimize user engagement and operational effectiveness across its digital platforms. By implementing targeted improvements and adopting a unified approach to content and technology, CLIA seeks to reinforce its leadership in the cruise industry while meeting the diverse needs of its global audience.

Solutions and Outcomes

Major features that were implemented included:

  • Unified Content Strategy:

    We recommended that CLIA implement a comprehensive content strategy that ensures clarity and accessibility of information across its website, with clear navigation that supports finding information through multiple avenues. This strategy will use user-friendly language to resonate with both industry professionals and the general public, enhancing engagement and understanding.

  • Dedicated Websites:

    We believe CLIA should consolidate its many websites down to two websites, but within those two, establish dedicated websites tailored to different audiences. One website will exclusively serve travel agents/agencies, consolidating resources such as professional development tools, event details, member benefits, and educational content. The second website will cater to cruise line executives, cruise line industry partners, journalists, and government officials/aides, providing comprehensive information about the cruise industry.

  • Regional Segmentation:

    CLIA aims to enhance accessibility and relevance by organizing content not only by geographic regions (e.g., North America, Europe, Australasia) but also by diverse topics such as sustainability and health, and different content types including policy and research. This multifaceted segmentation strategy addresses the global nature of their audience, ensuring that information is tailored to meet specific regional interests and broader thematic concerns. By providing content through various dimensions, CLIA seeks to optimize engagement and usability across its diverse member base.

  • Centralized Policy and Research Hub:

    A Policy Compendium and Research Hub can be established within the general website, providing easy access to CLIA’s policies, industry research, and data. We heard from interviews how important these resources are, and that they are hard to find distributed across the current website.  This new centralization location will ensure stakeholders can quickly find and utilize authoritative information on industry standards and regulations.

  • Advocacy Content Highlight:

    CLIA can increase the visibility of advocacy efforts on the website, featuring regional perspectives and industry impact. By promoting these initiatives prominently, CLIA aims to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability and responsible tourism practices.

  • Enhanced User Experience:

    We recommend that CLIA prioritize a seamless user experience across both websites, ensuring intuitive navigation, beautiful design, and alignment with the cruise industry theme. Users will confidently find the information they need, fostering positive engagement and interaction.

  • Unified Event Listings:

    Implementing a unified event listing with robust tagging and filtering options will improve user experience by allowing stakeholders to easily find and participate in relevant industry events. This streamlined approach enhances event discoverability and participation.

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