Onboard, the consumer website for planning luxury cruise travel, has set sail at last.
Tnooz broke the news of site's development a year ago.
Onboard's parent company is LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world's largest luxury conglomerate. It's also a cousin to Onboard Media, a custom publisher for magazines branded by major cruise lines, and Starboard Cruise Services, an on-ship retailer that serves many of the largest lines.
Onboard Media aims to build an online community of cruisegoers, which will flow in the wake of long-established forums and reviews sites Cruise Critic (owned by TripAdvisor) and Cruisemates.
It also says it plans to build "destination-related information that far surpasses any other cruise travel brand," which presumably means it has USA Today's recently launched cruise section in its periscope.
Like all of those sites, there will be reviews of ships, with giant photos and videos, plus industry news.
The site's main value add is integrated phone agent support. "Cruise advisors are just a phone call away to provide travelers with the live support and reliability," says the company.
Most other cruise information sites stick to online sales or affiliate links instead of call centers.
Onboard is in English and aimed at cruise ports and itineraries in the Americas and Europe, though its ambitions may expand to appeal to a more global audience over time.
The production values behind its cruise information videos are impressive, especially when compared with the videos found on established cruise sites. Here's an example: