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UK startup launches cruise comparison site

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Mark Shepherd set out to make the cruise booking process quick, simple and transparent
New UK startup, CompareThatCruise.com, launched this week offering a price comparison site for cruises across different cruise lines and also travel agents.

Headquartered in London, the cruise website compares over 200,000 cruise prices for around 24,000 different cruises and includes guides and photos of cruise lines, their ships, cabins and destinations worldwide.

It also features interactive cruise ship deck plans and digitised look inside any cabin on any ship.

The bespoke technology behind the site was developed in-house and took over three years to complete, informs founder and ceo of CompareThatCruise.com, Mark Shepherd.

The 36-year-old is a lawyer specialising in technology litigation, who has spent the last 13 years working at two of the UK’s leading law firms and also a semi-professional pool player, sports commentator and author of five books.

Aiming in the main at the influx of new cruisers who are younger and more technologically aware than ever before, Shepherd, explains: ‘When I went to book a cruise, I found it really difficult and time consuming to compare deals across different cruise lines and travel agents, and it felt like the market for booking cruises was light years behind the equivalent markets for flight and hotels.'

Despite the huge technological advances in cruise ship design, the technology for handling bookings hasn’t yet caught up, according to Shepherd who stated less than 10% of cruise bookings in the UK are made online. 'A big reason for that is the absence of any good quality comparison sites of the type that are the norm for flights and hotels,' he believes.

‘We therefore set out to create a completely new type of site which combines innovative technology with high quality content to make the cruise booking process quick, simple and transparent,' explained Shepherd.