Tagged: abacos, bahamas, beach bar, cracker p's, cruise, cruising, tni
Cracker P’s Bar & Grill on Lubbers Quarters in the Abacos, Bahamas.
I’ve become addicted to Twitter chats and one of the longest running and most influential ones related to travel is the #TNI chat which occurs on Thursday afternoons and is hosted by Traveler’s Night In (Twitter handle @Official_TNI). Yesterday’s subject was cruises with questions focusing on whether or not people enjoyed cruising, if they preferred bigger or smaller ships, if the draw of cruising was the ship itself or the ports of call, best and worst experiences and so on. One of the questions that grabbed my attention was about port excursions and whether or not they were worth it or a complete rip-off. I couldn’t answer the question since I’ve never been on a cruise but I have been on excursions that were a rip-off (the Criminals Hall of Fame museum in Niagara Falls comes to mind – at $6/person it would be $7 too much). Ror the most part, though, every one of my excursions during my travels has been worth it.
Since everything in the world always comes back to beach bars, it made me wonder what kind of services I could offer to cruisers that would make their choice of excursions at the various ports of call a little easier. There are companies that focus specifically on beach bar crawls (Cozumel Bar Hop comes to mind) and any tour agency can offer you custom excursions to your favorite beach bars. What kind of information would you want that would help you make your decision? For instance, in St. Kitts, you can step off the cruise ships at Port Zante and if you were interested in hanging out at a beach all day with some great beach bars, you could choose between Cockleshell Beach, The Strip at South Frigate Bay and South Friars Bay just to name a few. What kind of information would you want that would make you an informed consumer (expected price, food/drink info, environment at the beach, kids’ activities, tour operators, etc) who knew exactly where they wanted to go and how much to pay for it before they even took the first step off the ship? How would you want that information made available to you (Facebook, website, downloadable pdf, online forum, etc)?
To those cruisers amongst us or the soon-to-be first time cruisers, let me know what you think. A major redesign of the website is currently in the works and this is your chance to contribute to the content that will be offered. Who knows, maybe all of your cruise stories will convince me to finally take my first cruise!
For more on Cracker P’s Bar and Grill (pictured at the beginning of the aricle), check out their website or Facebook page.