We see a lot of “virtual” business these days - Web meetings, office workers who work from home some or all of the time, and even virtual companies with no permanent office. As bandwidth gets cheaper and more available, and as more tools become Web-based rather than hosted on a local server, we’ll certainly see more of this. VoIP is a big factor, too - it makes it easy to keep the same phone number but to take and make calls wherever there’s an Internet connection. Some posts at Cruise Ship News have us intrigued, though, by an even more outrageous form of virtual office. In Techno Cruise Ship, they note that Celebrity has outfitted the Century with WiFi connectivity in every cabin.
Our last experience with cruise ship connectivity wasn’t that impressive - aboard the Golden Princess, we found the connectivity to be slow, unreliable, and very expensive. Furthermore, WiFi was available only in a small lobby area on one deck. Despite the limitations, we found the small area to be quite busy with quite a few “regulars” who were clearly trying to stay connected to business at home. The connection was good enough to keep up with email and do a bit of business, but not fast or reliable enough to use our Vonage “soft phone” to make or receive phone calls. Even in ports where the ship could have connected via a temporary cable or wireless link to improve bandwidth, Princess grimly stuck with their dicey satellite link. A commitment to ubiquitous WiFi, though, suggests that Celebrity is probably also investing in their connectivity infrastructure.
If Celebrity and other lines deliver decent broadband access in passenger cabins, that would allow a whole new kind of virtual commuting. Can you imagine doing business from your private balcony as the ship floats around the Mediterranean or Caribbean?
This would be a short term virtual office, of course, as even longer cruises come to an end. But for the determined business cruiser, the same blog has the answer: in Cruise Ship Retirement, they suggest long-term cruising as an alternative to conventional retirement living. Indeed, there has been publicity periodically about “cruise ship condos,” though I’m not aware of any condo ships (where one buys the cabin and pays for ongoing services) actually afloat. The exact same concept would work for a more permanent business office.
Clearly, virtual commuting on a cruise ship isn’t broadly applicable - it’s expensive, and details like overnighting contract documents could be a bit problematic. At least in the coming years, we see most of the activity in what we’d call the “connected vacation” - a trip which is primarily vacation, but in which the individual connects for an hour or two at most each day to keep up to date and take care of important matters. This might enable an entrepreneur, a key manager, or any individual with critical skills to take a longer vacation than might otherwise have been possible. While it diminishes the “get away from it all” aspect of vacationing, it permits more time away with greater timing flexibility. We look forward to testing the new world of wireless cruising!
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