Article by Dennis Peeters

In every shipyard, before a single sheet of steel is cut, there is one time that sits at the foundation of it all: the General Arrangement, or GA.

The GA is the master plan. It’s the blueprint that takes stories and ideas into production reality. It decides where the bulkheads sit, how the decks stack, where guests sleep, where they eat, where they evacuate. Everything else, like the engines, the cabins, the lifeboats, and the intended guest experience, has to fit it. Get the GA right, the ship successfully sails. Get it wrong, you discover it at sea.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, while working on the next generation of cruise terminal check-in.

As I started work, I realized this: most cruise terminals today were not built from a GA. They grew, module by module, like building blocks that do not fully match. A kiosk added one year, a bag drop the next, a signage screen after that. Each one solving a real problem. None of them fully connected and integrated with the other.

With an upcoming kiosk POC, we have the chance to do it the shipyard way. We can draw the GA before we build the touchpoint.

• Our “bulkheads” are clean boundaries between the cruise line’s reservation system, the PMS, the terminal data, the border check, the baggage flow. Each owns its truth. None leaks into the others.
• Our “decks” are then the stack underneath. We are talking about the hardware, the cloud infrastructure, the integration, the biometrics. Proven elsewhere, tailored for cruise.
• Our “cabins and public spaces” are the guest moments. For example the passport scan, selfie, cruise card, wristband for the kids, a smile from an agent when something needs a human. One flow, not five. Fitting into our “decks”, and tailored to meet the guest’s expectations.
• Finally, our “lifeboats”. These are the things you hope you never need: graceful fallback for exception management of biometrics, cybersecurity, audit trails when regulators ask, data boundaries when two brands share the same kiosk.

Our kiosk POC goes way beyond a piece of hardware on the pier. It’s the first physical artefact of a much bigger drawing. It’s the one that decides whether the next decade of cruise embarkation feels like a queue, or feels like the start of the holiday.

The lesson from the yard applies far beyond steel: Stop bolting things on. Draw the GA first. That’s how the guest experience on the pier finally starts to match the one waiting for them on board.