Introduction
The Empire Cruises is a private New York based cruise business, which offers public dinner cruise and private event charters. Major services of Empire Cruises include Birthday Cruise, Prom Cruise, Graduation Cruise, Anniversary Cruise, Sweet 16 Cruise, Cocktail Cruise, Lunch Cruise, Holiday Cruise, and Cruise Rental. It was established in 2010 and owns the city’s most popular event yachts that aim at offering the best cruise experiences at special events. The fleet of Empire Cruises is comprised of five incredible yachts namely Lucille, Jacana, Harbor Lights, Nautical Empress, and Liberty Belle. The deluxe experience offered by the Empire Cruises can be relished from Skyport Marina – Manhattan and World’s Fair Marina – Queens. In 2014, the company expanded its operations to Brooklyn Army Terminal – Brooklyn and Pier 36 – Basketball City. It also initiated its operations by frequently reserving for holiday and private events. Empire Cruises’ fleet carries the perfect blend of elegance, excitement, and gorgeousness, and offers its guest the ultimate and matchless experience to aboard the most beautiful and affordable fleet of the New York City (Empire Cruises, 2016).
It has been only six years since Empire Cruises established its business; therefore, it is crucial to keep an eye on the internal and external business environment. It is significant for every business as it plays a vital part in strategic making and business planning while serving in realizing business objectives. Apparently, in order to develop efficient business plans and strategies and to achieve business objectives, SWOT analysis (tool to analyze internal and external business analysis) can be used to form a firm foundation for corporate planning. This paper focuses on analyzing the internal and external factors of Empire Cruises and discusses its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in details. Lastly, it offers some recommendations and actions steps that can be undertaken by the business for effective business performance and higher profitability.
Internal Analysis
Internal analysis of a business is basically an exploration of organization’s core business competencies, resources, cost positioning capabilities, and competitive sustainability within the industry. Internal analysis enables an organization learn about its strengths and weaknesses, which assists in making business strategies accordingly (Ma & Sun, 2012). An organization’s internal analysis usually incorporates all the possible measures that may offer worthwhile information related to strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats of the business. Below discussed are the core business strengths and weakness of Empire Cruises.
Strengths
It is a significant measure in the internal analysis of Empire Cruises in order to determine its core business competencies. Being a strong organization, Empire Cruises optimally use advanced technological systems and organizational equipment to perform its routine business operations and to achieve its financial targets. The below-mentioned strengths of Empire Cruises also indicate that it is capable of meeting its financial and strategic goals. It also illustrates that Empire Cruises has strong competencies and has a vital brand image that is built upon its organizational resources, capabilities, and expertise within the organization (Ma & Sun, 2012)
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Fleet Ownership
Assets are the central drivers of organizational success and if a firm owns them completely without any mortgage, then it is considered as a supreme benediction for a business. That is mainly because it is the chief contributor to cost minimization in long-term. The first and the foremost strength of Empire Cruises is the ownership of its fleet. Empire Cruises owns each of its five ships. This enables Empire Cruises to reduce its excessive cost of intermediary operations. In other words, owning ships enable Empire Cruises to skip the mediators and intermediaries that tend to add cost to the overall value chain. Once the cost of the fleet reaches the breakeven, it will result in greater profitability for the business. Additionally, this in long-term benefits Empire Cruises to invest its excessive earning in other assets that may enhance business performance, amenities, or productivity.
Another most significant benefit of owning the ships is the low-cost offerings to the customers. Empire Cruises claims to be the most affordable event cruise service of the city and this is only possible because it saves its costs by shrinking its supply chain. Removing intermediaries and relying on vertical integration offers higher authority and control over operations and saves the transactional cost that could be potentially charged by the vendors, intermediary financers, guarantors, and mortgages. Moreover, this also reflects the financial stability of the Empire Cruises and reinforcement of its resources as compared to its competitors (Empire Cruises, 2016).
Strong Market Presence, Effective Brand Positioning & Client Reliability
The Empire Cruises is well-known for its cost effectiveness and value proposition that aims to bring remarkable excursion experience to its clients. It has been ascribed to its event management excellence that has made an extraordinary brand position and brand equity into the minds of its customers who visits the offered services of Empire Cruises. The organization possesses a successful brand image that has set up a phenomenal reputation of the brand among its customers. Moreover, the organization is inventive and creative in holding up its solid image (Ma & Sun, 2012).
Qualified Workforce
Another strong factor is that the organization involves qualified and skilled officials, mechanical engineers, and managers that are familiar with cruise management and systems of worldwide cruise setting. The workforce possesses great experience, skill, qualifications, and expertise. Right now, the organization maintains divisions for different administrations, which incorporates all the proficient individuals. Efficient workforce of Empire Cruise enables it to reach the targets of its productivity, customer services, and financial targets.
Use of Modern Technologies
Additionally, the Empire Cruise is also endeavoring to redesign its structure in a succeeding way through the reception of advanced innovation and vitality effective frameworks within the cruise business. Like for instance, it has recently set up a cruise modernization system in all its ships that tends to reduce its cost. The recent changes have also assisted the firm with the upgradation of the correspondence procedure.
Weaknesses
Increasing Expenses & Operational Cost
Limited Market Presence & Newly Established Business
The competitors are consistently developing and expanding; whereas, Empire Cruises is limited to New York. The business requires marking its presence across the new emerging markets. Moreover, other competitors in the industry are far more established and developed in the industry and has developed a significant market image as compared to Empire Cruises (Hobson, 2014).
External Analysis
External analysis of a business is the exploration of external business factors that may offer organization the possible business opportunities and also post potential threats. Conducting an organization’s external analysis usually incorporates all the possible measures that may offer worthwhile information related to opportunities and threats of the business. Below discussed are the core business opportunities and threats for Empire Cruises.
Opportunities
Business Expansions & Amenity Expansion
Empire Cruises has an excellent chance for further expansion of the business. Empire Cruises also got a good demographic pattern where it doesn’t have to exclusively rely on a solitary business sector. Another open opportunity for the organization is inclined towards making Empire Cruises a global brand as far as it focuses to bolster the organization in different markets of the given industry. Differentiation could be the most contributing factor for Empire Cruises. It can add up number facilities and amenities that attracts customer towards the business. It can also introduce event themes and can add up creativity as this tends to fascinate more customers (Dickinson & Vladimir, 2012).
Threats
Unexpected Weather Conditions
Unforeseen weather conditions have always been the biggest threat for event cruise business. With the global warming issues, CFC’s effects and greenhouse emissions, the weather conditions have gone worse and are becoming harder to predict. Therefore, this consistently posts a threat to the cruise business as this result in low or even zeros sales for a certain period of time (Hobson, 2014).
Changes in Laws & Regulations
Like any other business, Empire Cruises is also prone to changes in the laws, legislations, taxation policies, social changes, environmental and macroeconomic policies & nationalization of business organiztaions. Increasing global warming concerns have also led to strict environmental regulations and policies. Numerous legal protocols require cruise businesses to cut carbon and gas emissions to a certain amount. Failure to fulfil such policies negatively influences the company and could result in diminished demand for its services due to the poor public image. Likewise, price controls can also impact the Empire Cruises negatively; as by enlisting a price ceiling the organization’s profitability in a long run can be affected (Dickinson & Vladimir, 2012).
Competitive Forces
The event cruise industry is related with high business returns and therefore, fascinates a lot of international and national players. The business not only strive on facilities offered but are also engaged on battling for markets, acquiring contracts, qualified employees and new technologies and whereas the products offered are almost the identical. Major competitors of Empire Cruises include Hornblower Cruises & Events, Spirit of New York, World Yacht, and Bateaux New York among others. For continuity, Empire Cruises must remain innovative and come about with methods to stay ahead. Like for instance it has to sort out ways of reducing the cost of production operations and apparently use of technology to enhance efficiency and green energy and to offer even lower prices to consumers (Martikke & Weisser, 2015).
Fluctuation in Financial Market Conditions
Empire Cruises also tends to be impacted by the dynamic economic market situations for instance, recessions, changes in economic conditions, exchange rates, changes in exchange control and accessibility to the debt instrument; which can potentially influence the liquidity of the business due to incompetence of implementing its organizational projects. Empire Cruises can also be influenced by the capital market risks, which can potentially affect its ability to finance its business commitments and to meets it obligations (Hobson, 2014).
Action Steps & Recommendations
Considering the overall business position of Empire Cruises, it can be concluded that the company currently uphold a stable position in the cruise industry with significant financial stability, skilled workforce, and asset ownership. However, due to increasing rivalry and technological progressions, Empire Cruises has to be proactive and vigilant in order to be highly responsive to be market and consumer needs. In order to achieve this, below mentioned are the some recommendations that can help Empire Cruises to sort its potential business threat and weaknesses;
First of all, Empire Cruises must remain innovative and should keep on coming up with methods to stay ahead with its competition by finding out the ways of reducing the cost of production and by offering lower prices to consumers.
Empire Cruises should incorporate advance technological methods that can enhance operational efficiency, productivity, and profitability of the business (Dickinson & Vladimir, 2012).
Empire Cruises should undertake comprehensive branding strategy to enhance brand visibility. Since the market has intense competition, a stronger market image is an imperative prerequisite for future success. Therefore, Empire Cruises is also required to reach as much customer as it can in order to expand its customer base. This can only be achieved by effective marketing efforts. Empire Cruises should integrate marketing means such as TV advertisement, flyers, and posters to disseminate information about its differentiated services.
Empire Cruises should also develop an Integrated Marketing Communication Mix. This would require the company to mark its presence on social media like Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms. This would help Empire Cruises to stay connected with its customers. This would also increase online correspondence of Empire Cruises with its customers and would ensure to guarantee convenient and extract exact feedback from its customers. Other advancements that Empire Cruises could incorporate includes remote web administrations, mobile phones, and intuitive TVs (Martikke & Weisser, 2015).
References
Dickinson, R. H., & Vladimir, A. N. (2012). Selling the sea: an inside look at the cruise industry. John Wiley and Sons. Retrieved on May 14, 2016
Empire Cruises. Official. Website. (2016). http://www.empirecruises.com/ Retrieved on May 14, 2016
Hobson, J. P. (2014). Analysis of the US cruise line industry. Tourism management, 14(6), 453-462. Retrieved on May 14, 2016
Ma, D., & Sun, J. (2014). Revenue Management System for the Cruise Industry: A Simulation Study. In Cruise Management (pp. 223-232). Gabler Verlag. Retrieved on May 14, 2016
Martikke, T., & Weisser, C. (2015). Cruise Passenger Choice Behavior Analysis & Implications for Service Design. In Cruise Management (pp. 1-18). Gabler Verlag. Retrieved on May 14, 2016
