Why Is Nobody on My Cruise Yet?

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t receive a message that starts something like: “Hey Jay, my cruise is booked in four months and I really want to meet people, but nobody is on my cruise.” They’re almost always incredibly nice messages, and I completely understand the frustration. But I’ll admit, they still crush me a little inside because the entire reason Matthew and I created CruiseHuddle was to help solve exactly this problem. We want you to find your people before your vacation. We want you boarding already knowing who you’re meeting for drinks, who’s joining you for dinner, who wants to split an excursion, and who you absolutely should—or perhaps absolutely should not—be sitting next to at the pool bar after six margaritas. But after ten months of building CruiseHuddle and watching how people actually discover us, we’ve learned something really interesting. About 87% of our members find CruiseHuddle only days before their sailing, and many don’t find us until they’re already on the ship. Think about how backwards that is. Cruise lines sell us these incredibly fun, exciting, social vacations with thousands of other people onboard. Naturally, many of us assume we’re going to step onto the ship and magically start meeting people. Then reality hits. You board. You unpack. You wander around. Maybe you sit at the pool for a while. And eventually you realize that despite being surrounded by 4,000 people, actually finding the people who want to connect with you can be surprisingly fucking difficult. So what happens? People grab their phones and start Googling things like How do I meet people on a cruise?, How do I make friends on my cruise?, How do I meet singles onboard? and plenty of considerably more colorful variations. And eventually, many of them find us. That’s great for CruiseHuddle, but I want them finding us four months before their cruise, not four margaritas after embarkation. That’s the Challenge We’re Trying to Solve CruiseHuddle just passed its 10-month anniversary, and I’ve tried to be completely transparent from day one about what Matthew and I are building, what’s working, what isn’t, and what we’re learning along the way. You see me constantly adding features, fixing bugs, redesigning things, and polishing the platform, but I spend just as much time trying to get people to actually discover CruiseHuddle. And frankly, that part is much harder. Whether we like the classification or not, CruiseHuddle is considered an adult platform by many advertising networks. That means most of the traditional paid advertising channels available to other travel companies either aren’t available to us or are severely restricted. So our growth depends heavily on two things: search engines and you. On the search side, we’re absolutely killing it. Our search performance is up 806% compared with last month, and CruiseHuddle is consistently reaching the first few results for many of the searches we’ve been targeting. But SEO alone isn’t enough. We need people talking about CruiseHuddle outside CruiseHuddle. We need links shared in relevant cruise communities, conversations on Facebook and other social platforms, and cruisers simply telling other cruisers, “Hey, you should check this out before your trip.” Word of mouth is incredibly important for us, and every single person who mentions CruiseHuddle somewhere else helps the next cruiser discover us a little earlier. So... Why Is Nobody on My Cruise? If your sailing is still several weeks or months away and your listing feels lonely, please give it some time. It doesn’t necessarily mean nobody wants to connect. In many cases, they simply haven't found us yet. People naturally get more excited and engaged as their vacation approaches. More listings appear. More people start researching their ship. More people start thinking about who they'll meet onboard. And unfortunately, some won't discover CruiseHuddle until they're sitting alone on the pool deck wondering how the hell they're supposed to meet any of the thousands of people surrounding them. Our job is to reach them sooner. My goal is to build an experience good enough that once you discover CruiseHuddle, you remember us when you book your next cruise—and instead of creating your listing three days before embarkation, you create it six months before. That's how this gets better. CruiseHuddle gets a little older. More people know we exist. Listings get created earlier. Those listings attract more cruisers, who hopefully create their next listings even earlier. And slowly, “Why is nobody on my cruise?” becomes a question I don't have to answer nearly as often. Until then, Matthew and I are going to keep pushing like hell to get CruiseHuddle in front of more cruisers. And I hope all of you will help us. Share CruiseHuddle when it makes sense. Tell your cruising friends. Mention us in relevant conversations. And if you have an idea for getting CruiseHuddle in front of more people, please send it to me. I mean that. Some of the best things we've built started with a member sending me a message that began, “Hey Jay, I have an idea...” I read those messages. I take them seriously. And as many of you have already discovered... Sometimes I get a little carried away and actually build the damn thing. 😂 XoXoXo Jay 💋