Costa Cruises, the largest Italian tourism group and Europe’s n.1 cruise company, presents two new innovative ways to discover everything about a Costa vacation from the comfort of your smart phone.
The first innovation is an iPhone application designed for the fleet’s 14 ships, Europe’s largest. The application can be downloaded free from Apple Store and iTunes and is available in 6 languages: Italian, English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese. It uses the main and most popular iPhone multimedia functions to take a real virtual tour on board Costa’s ships. All areas of each ship can be visited and examined with a 360° full-screen tour, plus photo galleries and descriptions: cabins and suites, wellness areas, deck lidos, bars, restaurants, works of art, as well as hi-tech features like Grand Prix simulators, a Golf simulator, swimming pool with sliding roof and giant screen, and 4D cinema.
To follow the dream itinerary of the ships in real time the application also includes an interactive geolocalisation system: the position of all ships in the fleet can be displayed on a map at any time. Select a ship and link up with the onboard webcams, one at the stern and one at the bow, to follow the entire cruise, day after day, in real time. If all the charm and fascination of these ships give you the urge to book a cruise, the application provides all the information you’ll need. And each time the application is updated you’ll be automatically notified.
The second innovative concept is the creation of two Costa Cruises mobile sites for all the latest-generation mobile phones, and always in 6 languages. These sites are dedicated to two of Costa’s most popular destinations: the Mediterranean (insert you country addrress) and Dubai (insert you country addrress). The Mediterranean is a historical destination that company ships have been sailing for more than 60 years, and where Costa is the leader. Dubai instead is a new destination that Costa Cruises was the first in world to offer, starting in winter 2006-07. While surfing the two mobile sites the ships are the main points of reference: multimedia contents include videos, photo galleries, and descriptions. For Dubai, the sister ships the Costa Luminosa and Costa Deliziosa, the fleet’s “high-end” ships, will offer 7-day cruises in the Arabian Gulf next winter. For the Mediterranean the company’s two flagships, the Costa Concordia and the Costa Serena (114,500 gross tonnage and 3,780 guests), will sail 7-day cruises in the summer of 2010: the first in the western Mediterranean and the second in the eastern Mediterranean.
Site surfers can also obtain detailed information about itineraries, with information sheets and pictures of each port on the ships’ itineraries. Two special sections are dedicated to prices and reservations.
