Evaluation of brand loyalty in cruise tourism: A research on modern cruise ships

Nowadays, in cruise tourism, which is one of the developing areas of the tourism sector, companies are in great competition to gain an advantage over their competitors. For this reason, cruise companies provide their guests with the best services and make great efforts to build brand loyalty. This study is aimed to do a research on measuring brand loyalty among guests participating in cruise tourism. Throughout the research, literature was used as secondary data source and quantitative method of survey was used to obtain primary data. The guests of two world-famous cruise ships were observed as participants in the study. The research consists of three main sections. In the first section, information about the definition, historical development and effects of cruise tourism is given. In the second section, topics such as the definition of the brand, the historical development of the brand, the benefits of the brand, brand loyalty, brand loyalty levels, brand loyalty in tourism are covered. In the third section, there is a detailed explanation of the research and the explanations of the data analysis of the surveys applied within the scope of the study. Within the scope of the research, the data were obtained through surveys applied to 390 people who were guests on cruise ships between January 2019 and February 2020. As a result of the analysis made in the research; It has been revealed that in cruise tourism, the participants give more importance to service quality and reliability rather than economic factors. In addition, the brand loyalty level of the participants to the cruise ships was very high.