P&O Cruises

P&O Cruises are perhaps the world's best known cruise brand. As a cruise line, one of the most important factors is your reputation. In gaining new guests you cannot simply rely on having an incredible looking deck that has incredible swimming pools and water-park like slides. Not even a flow-rider wave machine is enough to encourage people to overlook your name, your brand, and to consider if it is enough to put their trust in.

No, none of this is enough. For a cruse-line like P&O Cruises though, this is only part of it. For P&O Cruises, the brand name says a lot.

It both represents the service that has come before, and the service that continues until this day. P&O Cruises can rely on their name to some extent to help get them visitors as the brand name power says a lot about the company. But P&O have to ensure that they continue to provide excellent service lest their brand name weaken. After going on P&O Cruises, people who go on future cruises will make a decision about whether to stick with the P&O brand, or whether to opt for something different.

To this extent, P&O must constantly strive to ensure that the service they provide is world-class as brand name only gets people on the ship. It won't keep them coming back, won't help them spread the good work about P&O and won't make them enjoy their cruise. P&O Cruises is the oldest cruise line in the world and they currently own dozens of huge cruise ships. The newest ship will be Adonia, scheduled to arrive in 2011.

P&O really seem to love attention to detail. Some people might see it as being obsessive, but with a personal room steward who will make up your room twice a day and bar stewards who will take extra effort to remember your name and your favourite drink, it seems that P&O has a recipe for ensuring that each cruise is the holiday of a lifetime.

Having honed it for more than 170 years, you should expect nothing less. The culture onboard is very English with Michelin starred chefs like Gary Rhodes being associated with the cruise line and its silver service dinner and afternoon tea. P&O Cruises have been around for so long, and voted Britain's favourite cruise line so many times for a good reason. It's up to you to see if they can pull it off.