Carnival UK, the British arm of the world’s largest cruise ship operator is piloting Protouch kiosks at sea. Starting on the Cunard brand, the global cruise company is deploying the kiosks across its iconic cruise ships where they will initially be used to run a cash depositing system for crew members to administer on board accounts, and provide an information portal.

Until now Carnival has found it difficult to remove inefficient cash on board processes. As one of the largest vacation companies in the world with a fleet of 11 UK Ships, and 96 ships globally, the mixture of cash and other processes is unnecessarily taking its toll on man hours. With the new automatic system, crew members will be able to use the kiosks to top up their accounts without the need for staff assistance.

“The business response towards the kiosks has been very positive with the kiosks taking £40,000 in the first 3 weeks at sea. We are very pleased to continue our relationship with Protouch across our iconic Cunard and P&O Cruise Ships for further rollouts, and hope to extend the functionality of these kiosks in the future,” said Julian Banasiewicz, IT Projects Manager at Carnival UK.

Protouch is providing the total solution; hardware, software and a managed service with support and maintenance. Carnival UK elected for Xen X4 kiosks featuring note acceptors, 80mm receipt printers and magnetic stripe card readers. Crew members simply insert their Personalised Crew cards to check their card balance, top up their account, check currency crew exchange rates and also view personal details.

The kiosks were launched on new ship Queen Elizabeth for its maiden voyage on October 12th. A successful trial will see Carnival UK rollout out the kiosks across its high profile P&O Cruises and Cunard, brands. Future initiatives include a review of Passenger facing functions to extend the use of Protouch kiosks technology to automate passenger processes on board.