Travelcat2 Posted April 8, 2015 #1 Share Posted April 8, 2015 SHIP OF THE YEAR: REGENT SEVEN SEAS CRUISES’ SEVEN SEAS MARINER 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMARINER Posted April 9, 2015 #2 Share Posted April 9, 2015 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TedC Posted April 9, 2015 #3 Share Posted April 9, 2015 Voyager is my favorite of the three ships. Larger suites and a better layout for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Travelcat2 Posted April 9, 2015 Author #4 Share Posted April 9, 2015 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMARINER Posted April 9, 2015 #5 Share Posted April 9, 2015 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forevertravel Posted April 9, 2015 #6 Share Posted April 9, 2015 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. Forevertravel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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