In a practical sense, cruise companies regard the world as a series of sectors that meet various market needs. For the largest brands, this creates opportunities to configure operations to take account of:
Seasonality, weather patterns, and optimum conditions for cruising
Sales and marketing
Supply and servicing of ships
This chapter considers the influence and effect of geography on the cruise industry. Passenger comfort and safety are directly affected.
Because of geography, climate, and seasonal variations. Many stories are told of severe weather conditions in specific locations. For example, the Bay of Biscay, the Cape of Good Hope, the Bay of Bengal, and the North Atlantic have reputations for providing extremes of weather for seafarers or navigators.
Yet knowledge of weather patterns and records of tidal variations permit cruise operators to predict where ships with a high degree of safety. enable virtually all the world's oceans and seas to be traversed and all coastal ports to be visited.
Weather patterns are complex. They are influenced by many factors including: the Sun's rays, the Earth's rotational axis, which tilts 23.5 degrees from the perpendicular, thus creating seasonal variations(i.e. the four seasons), the land masses and oceans, currents and the moon's gravitational pull The northern and southern hemispheres experience seasons at opposite times of the year, reflecting the position of the Earth as it orbits the Sun.