Mariner - SHIP OF THE YEAR!!!!

Over three decades ago the World Ocean & Cruise Liner Society asked our members to complete a report card for every sailing they completed during the year in order to help us stay apprised on how each ship was performing

throughout the year. Acting as the eyes and ears of the Society our members’ input helped us view the industry, and the quality of its products, on a far more consistant basis than we could have on our own.

These report cards soon became the basis for our annual “Ship of the Year” award, a term which has been copied by many others over the years

which we consider a compliment. As the cruise industry grew, so did our

membership and so did the pile of report cards. Yet our formula stayed the same. The scores gathered from our members on these report cards are

gathered and tabulated with our coveted “Ship of the Year” award then presented to the statistical winner. The editors and writers of Ocean & Cruise.

News have no input into this award. This award is simply based on the ratings of the cruises taken by our members and submitted to us. While there are many prestigious cruise awards handed our each year, over the past 34 years our “Ship of the Year” award remains the most unique and prestigious in the industry. It has earned this status because it is not a “reader’s choice” award but instead is based on actual passengers reporting on their personal cruise experience. This may not sound so unique, but truth be told, many other award surveys can be completed by anyone with an email address or submission form and requires no actual ship or sailing date.

For the year 2014 we received report cards on 101 different ships. Everything from small barges, riverboats and exploration vessels to the largest mass-market ships were all represented. Our report cards, whether completed online or via paper mail in cards, asks our members to rate each cruise experience they take during a year much like a hotel, resort or restaurant might ask you about your experience at their establishment. We then qualify that the respondent actually experienced the ship by requesting specific

information, such as: the name of the ship, the ship’s itinerary, and the length and date of the cruise. We only include feedback from cruises taken during the calendar year in question to ensure that our survey reflects the most up-to-date information and because our award is an annual one. Our survey questions 14 key areas or categories that make up a cruise product. Members

are asked to score each category on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating the least satisfaction and 5 indicting the greatest satisfaction.

In order to complete a report card respondents must be a member in good standing of The World Ocean & Cruise Liner Society. They are a very diverse membership in age, earnings and cruise preferences. Our 2014 member profile contains a great deal of new members, many of which have joined us from our Facebook page. We are very proud to have you aboard. While many are too recent to have participated in our 2014 survey, it was a great pleasure to receive reports from some of our new members.

PUBLISHED BY THE WORLD OCEAN & CRUISE LINER SOCIETY

Vol. 34, Issue 4 - February 15, 2015 Download Link

(FYI. This is only a small part of the review)

OVERALL – This category is a general

summation of your cruise experience and is not an

averaging of the categories you were previously

asked to grade. The purpose of this category is to

give balance to those particular categories that are

more important to you. In other words, while it’s

possible that you didn’t enjoy some aspects of the

cruise, the ones you didn’t enjoy might not have

adversely affected your overall enjoyment of the

cruise. By the same token, areas that are important

to you may have delivered such a wonderful

experience that you felt this was one of your

favorite cruises. It also allows for you to grade all

the intangibles that do not fit within our survey

categories but are so important in judging the

quality of the overall experience. We have all seen

news stories of less than perfect cruises where

passengers praise the crew or certain positives they

remember. Here is your chance to reward that extra

smile or assistance with a grade.

Our ‘Overall” category asks the all important

question; “How well did you enjoy your overall

cruise experience?” Because of this, it carries triple

weighting in averaging all the category scores to

determine our “Grand Winner” .

This year’s top ship in the category of “Overall”

is Regent Seven Seas Cruises’ Seven Seas Mariner.

Scores of the top 20 ships ranged from 4.83 to 4.02.

The top 20 ships in this category are:

1 Seven Seas Mariner

2 Crystal Symphony

3 Oceania Riviera

4 Seabourn Quest

5 Seven Seas Voyager

6 Crystal Serenity

7 Nieuw Amsterdam

8 Oceania Marina

9 American Queen

10 Queen Mary 2

11 Royal Princess

12 Queen Victoria

13 Norwegian Breakaway

14 Queen Elizabeth

15 Oceania Regatta

16 Seven Seas Navigator

17 Noordam

18 Eurodam

19 Regal Princess

20 Celebrity Silhouette

GRAND WINNER – Our Grand Winner category

is not one of the categories we ask our readers to

grade, nor do we have any input into. The Grand

Winner category is simply the statistical averaging

of the thirteen categories, plus Overall that our

members graded on the Cruise Report Card forms,

taking into account the extra weighting given to

three categories, Food, Dining Service and Overall.

The ship receiving the highest average score for all

thirteen categories is awarded our “Ship of the

Year” honor.

In order for a ship to become our “Ship of the

Year” it takes an exceptional consistency of high

marks in each of the categories, because very often

the difference between the “top” and the “middle of

the pack” is decided by mere fractions of a point. A

ship need not place first in each category, but

usually must place within the top five or ten, in at

least most of the weighted categories in order to

win.

It is important to keep in mind that our “Ship of

the Year” award is based on passenger satisfaction

and is not the type of qualitative judgment which is

often the basis for other surveys or guidebooks.

Because it is a measure of satisfaction rather than a

cooperative or qualitative judgment, any ship in

any category has an equal chance to place high in

our survey.

Each cruise line promotes its ships in its own

way and to a particular segment of the population.

Passenger’s satisfaction is the pure assessment of

what an individual expected against what he

received. Other surveys and guides that judge ships

on a qualitative basis do not measure the individual

aspects of the cruises that are so important to

overall passenger satisfaction.

The “Grand Winner” and our 2015 “Ship of the

Year” honor is awarded to Regent Seven Seas

Mariner voted “Ship of the Year” by our members

for delivering the highest degree of overall

satisfaction to them during the 2014 cruise season.

Our congratulations to Regent Seven Seas

Cruises and the crew of the Seven Seas Mariner for

delivering the consistently highest degree of

passenger satisfaction to our members.

As you will see from the following results of

our “Grand Winner” category, this year’s survey

was extremely close. Here are the top 20 ships that

our readers judged as the ones that gave them the

highest degree of passenger satisfaction in 2014.

They are listed in order along with the averaged

scores that each achieved.

1. Seven Seas Mariner .............................4.8291

2. Oceania Riviera....................................4.7911

3. Crystal Symphony.................................4.7187

4. Seven Seas Voyager..............................4.6999

5. Seabourn Quest....................................4.6874

6. Queen Victoria......................................4.6121

7. Crystal Serenity.....................................4.5929

8. Nieuw Amsterdam................................4.5913

9. Oceania Marina...................................4.5167

10. American Queen.................................4.4962

11. Queen Mary 2.....................................4.4149

12. Eurodam.............................................4.3883

13. Queen Elizabeth.................................4.3331

14. Royal Princess...................................4.2764

15. Norwegian Breakaway.......................4.2266

16. Seven Seas Navigator.........................4.2111

17. Noordam.............................................4.1997

18. Rotterdam...........................................4.1877

19. Oceania Regatta.................................4.1722

20. Celebrity Silhouette............................4.1444

Voyager is my favorite of the three ships. Larger suites and a better layout for me.

Voyager is my favorite of the three ships. Larger suites and a better layout for me.

Agree but it was sure nice to see Regent beating out Seabourn, Crystal and Oceania:D

Who are "World Ocean & Cruise Liner Society?" Anyone know? I have seen them around for years, but really know nothing much about the organization. I have read their webpage about the demographics of their members, but how many members do they have? Their Facebook page has about 2,700 likes, which is not much. Compared to CruiseCritic that purportedly has over 1,000,000 members.

As much as I am a "fan" of Regent I cannot put much validity into these types of awards without more information as to the underlying cohort, particularly when it seems to be a relatively small number.

Can anyone enlighten me?

j

I love the Mariner. While the regular cabins are slightly smaller than Voyager the Penthouse suites are larger. I like the areas of the Mariner better than Voyager's. I also prefer the coffee connection in Mariner (is that what's called) to Voyager. Voyager's is before entrance to theater and too crowded if people are playing cards there.

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