Who's who in cruise retail....
- Adrian Pittaway
- Jul 29, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Aug 15
If you are new to our industry or looking for your first job onboard, it can be a little confusing trying to understand how the cruise retail industry works, as it is not immediately obvious.
So, in this blog we will do our best to try to give you a little insight into how it works and who is who, so you can recognise the main players.
Ok, let's start with the big picture. Most cruise retail operations onboard cruise ships are not run by the cruise line. Instead they are run by a concessionaire / partner who will operate the retail shops on behalf of a cruise line. When you are onboard the ship you would think that the shops are part of the cruise line, but in fact the concessionaire will operate them because of their specialist skill in retailing. Not all cruise lines operate with concessionaires, and some manage the retail themselves. So, in this blog let's take you through the who's who of concessionaires and cruise lines (in-house), and by the end hopefully you will understand a little bit more about who runs what!
So, here is the definitive Cruise Retail Academy list of who's who in our amazing industry.
STARBOARD GROUP
Type of operator: Concessionaire
Starboard Group has over 65 years of years of history in the travel retail sector starting in 1958. Today, the American company with headquarters in Miami is one of the largest cruise retail operators in the world, with sister company Onboard Media, also providing port shopping and marketing solutions to the global cruise industry as well as a new expansion into vacation retailing in resorts in locations like Las Vegas and Orlando. Starboard, along with their luxury division currently operates on 91 ships across 14 cruise brand partners with over 750 different brand partners. Large cruise line partners include Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises, Carnival Cruises, Dream Cruises, Mein Schiff, Princess Cruises and Holland America Line. Smaller / luxury cruise line partners include Virgin Voyages, Azamara, Ritz-Carlton, Silversea and Crystal Cruises.
HARDING +
Type of operator: Concessionaire
Harding +, is a British company with headquarters based near Bristol, but also with regional hubs in Miami and Sydney. The largest cruise retailer currently, Harding+ works with 16 cruise brand partners across the globe, including more than 90 cruise ships and 300 onboard shops. Cruise line partners include large ship operators such as Princess Cruises, Carnival Cruise Line, P&O Cruises, Cunard, Ambassador Cruises, Marella Cruises; as well as smaller luxury / expedition ship operators such as Viking Ocean Cruises, Hurtigruten, Fred Olsen and Saga.
EFFY
Type of operator: Concessionaire
Effy jewelry is a family-owned jewerly company headquarted in New York City, who have been selling jewelry onboard cruise ships for many years but in the past decade have started as a concessionaire operator onboard a number of cruise ships offering their jewelry ranges in dedicated boutiques. Today, Effy runs 4 divisions in the cruise industry: Effy Jewelry which has dedicated jewelry shops on Princess, Royal Caribbean, Holland America, Carnival Cruise Line and MSC. HFGM which operates the port shopping business on a number of cruise ships including Royal Caribbean and Carnival. HFDF operates the general retailing business across Holland America, Seabourn and on Carnvial Liberty. Finally, Escape by Effy are full cruise charters to their most loyal customers on cruise lines such as Holland America and Carnival.
MSC GROUP - CRUISE DIVISION
Type of Operator: In-house
MSC Cruises is a Swiss family-owned cruise line with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland with regional offices across the world. MSC operates 25 cruise ships across 2 brands, MSC Cruises and Explora Journeys across the globe. It is also unique in the cruise retail industry as being the biggest cruise line operating its own retailing operation with over 200 boutiques across their fleet. Across a large number of categories, MSC caters to a wide range of nationalities and markets with their onboard retail offering. The rapid growth of MSC in the past years has seen it become the fastest growing cruise line, now 3rd in terms of guests carried.
HEINEMANN
Type of operator: Concessionaire
Gebr. Heinemann and their subsidary Heinemann Americas, cruise retail services can be found across a number of cruise ships. As one of the world's leading travel retail companies, operating across the globe they operate in a number of major airports such as Frankfurt, Istanbul and Sydney alongside inflight, cruise and with a number of wholesale partners. Heinemann is a German family owned company with headquarters in Hamburg and regional hubs in Miami, Singapore and Sydney. In the cruise industry, Heinemann operates as a cruise line retail operator on Royal Caribbean, Mein Schiff, Hapag Lloyd, Phoenix Reisen and with the largest cruise retail space at sea, on Aroya Cruises in Saudi Arabia. They also provide wholesale partner services for a number of the other cruise retail operators. Recent ship openings include the largest cruise ships in the world, Icon of the Seas and Star of the Seas.
AVOLTA
Type of operator: Concessionaire
Avolta is the largest travel retailer in the world operating across all continents and specifically in a number of major airports globally. Consisting of companies such as Dufry, Autogrill, HMS Host, Nuance and World Duty Free, Avolta is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland with offices across the world. In the cruise industry, Avolta (or Dufry Cruise Services) operates as the major concessionaire on Norwegian Cruise Line with nearly all the ships in the fleet, including new ships such as Norwegian Aqua. Avolta also has Colombian Emeralds as part of its brand portfolio which is used to augment some of their onboard / downtown port shopping operation. Alongside this, they operate the port shops in destinations such as Cozumel, Jamaica which helps to offer an onboard / onland operation mix.
DIAMONDS INTERNATIONAL
Type of Operator: Concessionaire
Diamonds International is the largest port shopping luxury jewelry operator in the Caribbean with a vast network of boutiques across most of the islands and ports. Now DI is expanding onto cruise ships with a number of jewellery and general merchandise stores at sea. They operate jewellery boutiques with Disney Cruise Line and onboard Sun & Star Princess. And recently they have added general retailing onboard Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises also. Famed for their Crown of Light diamonds, Diamonds International is showing an exciting co-ordinated approach between onboard and onland operation in the US cruise market.
AIDA & COSTA CRUISES
Type of Operator: In-house
Along with MSC, Aida / Costa is another major cruise line that runs its own retail operation. Aida cruise line is the largest German specific cruise line operator with headquarters in Rostock, Germany. The line currently has 11 ships tailored exclusively for German cruises and 9 ships with Costa Cruises tailoring mainly to an Italian / French demographic. On Aida cruises are a number of bespokely designed shops for their passengers where the experience and knowledge of the cruise operator really shines through. Not only this, Aida is one of the few cruise lines to operate its own online shop for guests once they have disembarked.
DISNEY CRUISE LINE
Type of Operator: In-house
Disney Cruise Line operates a fleet of 6 cruise ships, with another 2 to come this year alone, including the Singapore-based Disney Adventure. Disney being a huge operator of own-brand merchandise across its network of stores and theme parks around the world takes their extensive retailing experience onto their cruise line fleet. Currently, the majority of their onboard boutiques are run in-house across their different categories focused specifically on the Disney guest.
CHINA DUTY FREE GROUP CRUISE SERVICES (CDFGCS)
Type of Operator: Concessionaire
China Duty Free Group operate on a number of cruise ships that are based in the China cruise market. Included in these are the newly launched Chinese built ship Adora Magic City run by Adora Cruises. The shops on this ship are the largest currently in the cruise retail industry with a large selection of brands and merchandise in a large purposely designed onboard setup.
BELLARRI
Type of Operator: Concessionaire
Bellarri jewelry currently has a number of it's concessionaire jewelry stores on Viking Ocean Cruises. Headquartered in Scottsdale, USA, this operator is famed for very artistic and creative luxury pieces.
MAJOR TRUNK SHOW OPERATORS (KALLATI, ROYAL, LE VIAN)
KALLATI
Kallati Jewelry has established a strong presence in the cruise retail sector, partnering with several leading cruise lines to offer their fine jewelry to a captive audience. As a family-owned business with a legacy spanning four decades, Kallati provides a wide range of exquisite pieces, from precious and semi-precious jewelry to their distinctive "bespoke design and manufacture" service.Â
ROYAL JEWELRY
Royal by RJM is family owned with three generations of experience in the gem and jewelry trade and operates a number of trunk shows across major cruise lines, particularly focusing on world cruises. Royal’s trend-setting designs, superb craftsmanship, and astonishing value are known throughout the world.
LE VIAN
Le Vian is a prominent player in the cruise retail space, known for its distinctive and patented Chocolate Diamonds. Their trunk shows are a major event on many cruise lines, offering guests the opportunity to view and purchase a wide selection of their fine jewelry, often including unique, one-of-a-kind pieces brought directly from their design vault. Le Vian's cruise presence capitalizes on the vacation mindset, providing travelers with a chance to acquire a special, high-end keepsake.
CONCLUSION
There are of course 2 important things to know about this list. The first that it is always changing, so we will do our best to update this list, but bear in mind that it is a continuously shifting set of contracts, so to keep track of them all is always a challenge. And the second is that there are many cruise ships not in this list, such is the vast size of the global cruise industry, so here we have only covered the major players.
There are many opportunities across the cruise retail industry with so many different operators across the global fleet. If you are ready to start your cruise retail journey, then we are here to do our best to support you working with most of these operators.
Cruise Retail Academy is the leading recruiter for jobs in the cruise retail industry. We have 15 different roles on offer across 20 cruise lines. We also offer free onboarding training to all our members from a choice of over 40 E-Academy courses, all available on our free app.
If you are interested to know more, then simply visit our recruitment page to find the perfect cruise retail job for you!
Let's sail together!