ABSTRACT
This is a report synthesising and discussing the key outcomes of the 6th International Cruise Conference (abbr. ICC6), which was held in Bremerhaven (Germany) in June 2019. In line with the character of the ICC Conference Series, the 6th edition of the conference addressed the visible issues and current challenges facing the cruise sector employing a variety of disciplinary perspectives and methods. A total of 75 speakers and participants from 9 different countries engaged in an open and intense discussion of ´highly relevant topics, including: Cruise sector sustainability, safety, technology diffusion, human resources and education, as well as cruise destination development and governance. Following a thematic analysis of the conference’s submissions and presentations, a number of somewhat unanticipated, yet highly relevant, areas of discourse emerged and are briefly discussed in this report. The speaker contributions, as well as the derived themes, diverged from the mainstream marketing- and economic-related focus dominating cruise tourism research. The emergence of practically-relevant, under-researched areas can be attributed to the specifics of the conference’s format and the corresponding participant composition and their interactions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The Cruise Research Society is the scientific network aimed at developing and promoting academic research in cruise tourism and also endorsing and organising the ICC conference series. Homepage: http://www.cruiseresearchsociety.com
2 Mentimeter online application – http://www.mentimeter.com
3 The audience ratings and comments were used as an individual feedback for the speakers, as well as input – in an aggregated form - for table 1 to provide a comparison of the relevance attributed to each theme by the conference participants