In the last two episodes we looked at embarkation and disembarkation, with the passenger at the center. In this one we stay in Terminal Operations, but we follow the luggage.
Nobody likes losing a luggage. It has happened to me at airports more than once, so I know the feeling: you’ve waited for this holiday for months, and suddenly your plans fall apart and the stress kicks in.
For the crew, moving luggage is a big challenge too. Thousands of items have to be delivered safely in a short window of time, and in that rush mistakes are easy to make.
Drop-off
How we handle luggage depends a lot on what the passenger terminal allows. The best case is a ship docked at our own terminal, where almost nothing limits us.
The first step is baggage drop-off. When passengers arrive, they need to know where to go. Drop-off has to be well organized so it doesn’t create long queues, because the process itself is simple.
Technically, every luggage needs a tag with its destination: ship, cabin number, and optionally the passenger’s name (depending on data protection rules). It’s best to do the tagging before the bags reach the terminal. In theory that’s easy: include a generated tag when the passenger buys the cruise, and let them print it and attach it to the luggage. But what if the passenger has no printer? With digital documents becoming the norm, that happens more and more often.
If the cruise is booked well in advance, the tag can be sent by post. This costs the cruise line money, but it makes drop-off faster. Each cruise line has to run the numbers and find its own balance.
Either way, we need to be able to print a tag at drop-off when a luggage doesn’t have one. Technology helps here.
First, we identify the passenger, for example from their ticket. Instead of searching manually in a mobile app, we can scan the barcode or QR code that is usually printed on the ticket. Then we print the right number of tags. Depending on the space, we can use small mobile printers such as the Zebra ZQ600 Plus. They save space and make the crew more flexible. For classic drop-off desks, a stationary printer like the ones used at airports is more convenient.
At this point the passenger can forget about their luggage. On the other side, the crew has to get it to the cabin.
Cabin delivery
Tagged bags start their trip to the ship. Usually they are loaded onto carts, and forklifts move them to the ship. Inside, behind the shell doors, the bags are unloaded and delivered to individual cabins.
A good approach is to scan the bag whenever its location changes in a meaningful way. It doesn’t have to be complicated or slow. Porters can carry a mobile device with a built-in scanner, and the device can know where on the ship it is. After a scan, the bag’s location is updated. One important change is the move from the terminal (drop-off) to the ship. From then on, if someone asks about a bag, we know it is at least on board.
Depending on the cruise line’s needs, we can let passengers track their bags, or at least tell them when a bag has been delivered to their cabin.
Cruise lines often hire external staff to help deliver luggage. In that case, the bag tag can include instructions, such as which elevator is the fastest way to the cabin, or a sketch of the best route. The same information can show up in the app after the bag is scanned.
As mentioned before, mobile devices can find their own location using access points or BLE. So wherever the bag is scanned, its location gets updated. How often we set these checkpoints depends on the process of each cruise line.
The last step is delivery to the right cabin. To record it and avoid mistakes, a quick scan is enough: scan the tag, then scan the cabin ID. For example, we can place a QR code that identifies the cabin on each cabin door, or somewhere inside.
What about disembarkation?
We can use the same process in the other direction. At the end of the cruise, the crew often carries bags from the ship to the terminal. The pressure is lower here, because a delay or even a lost bag has fewer consequences for the passenger.
What about wireless technology?
In theory, we could put RFID chips or passive beacons in the tags. The ship would detect the bags automatically, and location updates would need no manual scanning.
It looks great on paper, but in practice it brings new problems. The first is cost. RFID chips and beacons in tags make the process more expensive and more complex, and we are talking about millions of bags. To get the full benefit, the ship also needs the right infrastructure. It’s a one-time cost, but not a small one.
That’s why, at large scale, classic barcodes and QR codes still make much more sense than RFID or BLE.
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