Online gaming and cruise trips - you couldn't make it up?! Well, a team at Embark.at did for its entry in the recent THack @ SFO in San Francisco.
The company decided to break out from its existing cruise deal platform to create the Embark Challenge, a fun and easy way to up-sell tours and activities to ship passengers.
Embark.at was highly commended by the judges for its efforts with the hack, using APIs from Rezgo and LocalGuiding, as well another from the Sqoot deal service.
Allan Teruel, chief cruiser of Embark, explains:
"When a cruise is purchased via Embark’s marketplace, the cruiser is given an opportunity to play The Embark Challenge. The cruiser choses an activity that they want to go on such as a city tour or wine tasting trip, and they commit 10% of the listed retail price.
"After an additional nine join that game, The Embark Challenge is on. A random winner, selected via a jQuery roulette-like wheel, is awarded the activity at no additional cost.
"The nine others are presented an opportunity to purchase the tour at full price less their 10%. Embark’s hope is for the winner to buy additional tickets for their accompanying party and losing participants to redeem their loss by converting to a purchase.
"In both scenarios, Embark, their API provider and tour operator would win from the sale while the cruiser would have the satisfaction of a great cruise add-on."
Teruel says the company understood that many of its existing cruise customers would avoid shore excursions provided by the cruise operator and often ventured out on their own.
Unfortunately, once on shore, many of them "took a shot-in-the-dark in terms of safety, value and quality for port activities".
The company is planning on testing the Embark Challenge with a few customers in the latter part of the year, with it possibly becoming a feature of the main service in 2013.