Cruise Ship Days in a Port Town

A ship in the harbour

On a cruise ship day, a small town takes in a few thousand extra people before breakfast. They have a few hours ashore, an all-aboard time and no car.

Most carry a phone, and many start searching before they leave the ship or while standing at the terminal: coffee, lunch, souvenirs, a short tour, something worth the walk.

What they find in those first minutes decides where they go. A business shown as closed, or with no hint of how far away it is, is passed over for one that answers both questions.

The season is starting now, and every ship day follows the same pattern.

What a passenger checks first

• Open now, on a ship day, at this hour.
• Minutes on foot from the terminal.
• What you sell, in a sentence and a photo.
• How long a visit takes, especially for meals and tours.
• Payment: cards, and whether US dollars are accepted.
• A route that is easy to follow on foot.

The first is the one that loses the most visits. A passenger searching at half past eight sees a business that opens at eleven, and it drops out of their morning entirely.

Hours that suit ship days

The port publishes the season's schedule: which ships call, on which days, when they dock and when they leave. Download it now and put every ship day in the business calendar.

Then decide what ship days need: an earlier opening, an extra person at the counter, a lunch menu that can be served quickly to people watching the clock.

Plan around departure as well as arrival. Passengers head back well before all-aboard, so the late afternoon of a ship day can be quieter than the morning suggests.

The listing passengers see

A search for coffee or lunch near the terminal brings up a map and a short list of nearby places, drawn from Google My Business, which is still tied to each business's Google+ page.

On a computer that list can run to seven businesses. On a phone, fewer fit on the screen before the first scroll.

Distance from the searcher counts, which favours businesses near the terminal, but only if the listing is right. Check the pin sits on your actual door and the category describes what you sell.

Make the listing show your ship-day hours. Where ships call on the same weekdays all season, set those days to match and change them back when the season ends.

Where the days vary, keep the listing to hours you can keep every week, and put the ship-day schedule on the website's first screen and the Facebook page.

Add a photograph of the shopfront from the street, so someone walking with a phone can recognise it.

A first screen for people on foot

Passengers often browse on a weak connection: the ship's Wi-Fi, a crowded terminal network or roaming data they are rationing. A heavy page with a slideshow may never finish loading.

The first screen should say what you are, whether you are open today, how many minutes' walk it is from the terminal, and give a phone number that dials when tapped.

Make the address a link that opens in the phone's map. Put everything else below it.

Say how far it is on foot

Distance is the deciding question for someone without a car. Give it in minutes, from the terminal, along a route they can follow.

Name landmarks rather than street names: along the waterfront path, past the fish market, up the hill beside the bank. Say whether the route is flat, since some passengers find hills hard.

A simple map image with the route drawn on it helps anyone unsure, and it stays on the screen once loaded, even when the signal drops.

A worked example

A rug hooking supply shop sits up a short hill from the cruise terminal in a small port town. It sells wool, backing, frames and hooks, and kits with patterns of the harbour, the lighthouse and local birds.

Its regulars are local, and its normal hours start at eleven. Passengers found it mostly by chance, and some said they had seen the listing at nine and assumed it was closed all day.

The website was a single page with a large slideshow and the shop's address. Nothing said how far it was from the ships, or that the small kits pack flat in a suitcase.

Ships call on the same three weekdays most weeks, so the shop now opens at nine on those days, and its listing says so.

The home page lists the season's dates and gives the walk: twelve minutes, mostly along the waterfront.

The slideshow went, a page now shows the travel kits with prices, and a card with the walking route sits at the visitor centre.

Prices and payment for visitors

Many passengers are American. Show prices in Canadian dollars and say so, and state plainly whether American cash is accepted, and the rate you give.

With the lower Canadian dollar, many prices look good to visitors from the United States. A clear policy at the till avoids awkward arithmetic with a queue waiting.

If you can ship larger purchases home, say so on the website. A passenger who loves something too big for a suitcase may still buy it.

The people who send passengers

Visitor centre staff, tour guides, shuttle drivers and the terminal's information desk answer the same questions all day. Leave them cards with your walking route and ship-day hours.

Ask them what passengers ask for most. It is the cheapest research you will ever do, and it often names something you sell but never mention.

The counter-case

A business a long way from the terminal, or one serving locals by appointment, gains little from ship days and need not reorganise around them.

Nor should anyone promise early hours they cannot staff all season. A listing or website that says open when the door is locked does more harm than plain regular hours.

For businesses within walking distance, though, ship days deserve their own hours, an accurate listing and a website that answers a passenger in one screen.

Before the next ship

1. Download the season's ship schedule from the port.
2. Set hours and staffing for ship days.
3. Show ship-day hours in the listing.
4. Check the listing's pin and category.
5. Put hours and the walk on the first screen.
6. State your payment policy for US dollars.
7. Leave cards at the visitor centre.

Step three is the one passengers see first. The listing is what appears on a phone at the terminal, and the opening time shown there decides whether you are in their morning at all.

Describing the way to your door from where customers actually start follows the same logic as road construction outside the shop.

Frequently asked questions

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