Influences of Celebrity Chefs on Cruise Fine Dining Experiences

Giving chefs celebrity status is not a new concept, as history has shown that many past eminent chefs have shaped food and restaurant systems which are prevalent in today’s cruise culture and post modern hospitality organisations (Muller, 1999; Kelly 2005; Featherstone, 2007). The cruise industry has embraced the celebrity chef phenomenon with gusto and there is evidence of major cruise lines adopting one or more celebrity chefs on cruise lines to enhance their cruise brand and increase sales. This paper will endeavour to evaluate the role of celebrity chefs within the context of the cruise industry and critically analyse the value of celebrity chefs, be it for product enhancement or cruise marketing opportunities. Cruise experiences are already embedded within the marketing matrix of the cruise industry and this paper questions whether celebrity chefs are an integral part of the cruise vacation or just a marketing gimmick (Douglas and Douglas, 2004; Petrick and Xiang, 2006; Morgan, 2009a). Furthermore, this paper will review the need for celebrity chefs in the first place, who to select and how to ensure that the chef brand complements the cruise brand. Emphasis is also given to cruise fine dining experiences already on offer and further explores whether celebrity cruise fine dining is just another ‘hype’ drawn from the influences of the captive media imagination (Giles, 2001; Turner, 2004). A renowned celebrity chef is only as good as the amount of media attention he/she exports to the cruise industry, and could therefore be deemed a valued marketing tool for the cruise industry. At present, the celebrity chef phenomenon can be viewed as a test tube for cruise research, therefore this study examines perceptions of cruise passengers’ celebrity fine dining experiences and the outcomes of the results from questionnaires distributed to cruise passengers will be a platform for recommendations to the cruise industry and future research.