30 Apr 2010 - TravelMole Web Awards winners revealed

Cleancruising.com.au beat the odds by winning 2 categories today - Travel Innovator of the year AND Most exciting new technology in travel at the awards ceremony in Singapore before an audience of more than 1,000 travel technology leaders who are attending the EyeforTravel Travel Distribution Asia conference.

Chairman of the judging panel Ric Shreves, founder and partner of Water & Stone, said the quality of this year’s nominated companies was extremely high and both winners and those short-listed for the awards could be proud of their compelling websites.

Shreves was joined on the judging panel by Liz Craig, principal - Oneglobe Network; Joe Buhler - Buhlerworks - principal and PhocusWright - Social Web Marketing Consultant and Senior Destination Marketing Analyst for PhoCusWright; Ron Ramanan - founder & managing director GoQuo; Reece Gladstone - consultant TravelZoo; Aaron Koh - consultant and Meraj K Huda - founder/principal of Forumline.com

Commenting on the awards, Joe Buhler said, “Reviewing the various candidates reveals some creative and innovative approaches to website development and web based marketing in the region."

Meraj Huda said, "The winners in each category have indicated that travel industry-related websites are utilising more and more of the 'best practice' features. There were several finalists and winners that had a balance of rich content, technical competency, as well as functional focus.

"Clean Cruising was a clear winner in its nominated categories for its exemplary use of new technology to make interactive user experience an integral part of the overall e-marketing process."

GM Dan Russell received the awards from TravelMole's Paul Chern, Sales Director for South East Asia.

He said “We embraced virtual tourism 4 years ago by first mapping the world’s cruise ports and paths and then accurately modelling the ships so this rewards our efforts to date. It’s a world-first, and travellers love the rich experience now available on their PC’s, home plasma screens or their Iphones.  The stunning detail of both ships and ports blurs the line between our virtual and real worlds.”

Russell predicted, “These are early days for ‘virtual tourism’ but it’s certainly the way of the future. The travel market is looking for more interactive applications, and soon you will be able to design your entire holiday - by air, land & sea - to preview at your leisure in a video at YouTube or your mobile phone.”

As the only cruise site among all categories, these major awards consolidate Clean Cruising's lead position in the online cruise landscape. Their unique virtual cruise videos can be experienced at both this website and YouTube.

11 Mar 2010 - TravelMole Web Innovation Awards - Asia/Pacific 2010

TravelMole's Web Innovation Awards for the travel and tourism industry in Asia Pacific are back - and they're bigger than ever. Competition this year is tough as the industry's best vie for these prestigious awards, last held in 2008.

The full list of award categories is:

Travel Innovator of the Year (shortlisted)
Most exciting new technology in travel (shortlisted)
Best Use of Social Media
Travel Start-up of the Year
Best Ancillary Revenue Strategy
Most Effective use of Mobile Media
Most Innovative Use of Video (shortlisted)
Web 2.0 Mash up
Best Website Design

Clean Cruising has been shortlisted in 3 of 10 categories. Winners of the awards will be announced at The EyeforTravel Distribution Summit Asia 2010 - Asia's largest annual online travel event - at The Marina Mandarin Singapore April 28-29. .. more

19 Jun 2008 - Clean Cruising voted Best Mashup at Google Dev Day!

Yesterday Google hosted hundreds of Australia's top mapping and Web 2.0 developers at their Google Developer Day event in Sydney. Clean Cruising was one of 6 sites featured in the "Speed Geeking" sessions, which let us showcase the site and get feedback from many of the developers who attended. They also had the chance to vote for their favourite and we're very excited that they chose Clean Cruising, particularly when the other sites were pretty neat too. Thanks to those who dropped by on the day!

So what does this mean for you, our users who are considering your next (or first) cruise holiday. It confirms that Clean Cruising provides you with research and comparison tools that are profoundly superior to any other cruise website available. And after learning more about what Google's got in store, we're looking forward to bringing you a number of new features in the months ahead.

3 Jun 2008 - Google Developer Day showcase

Many of the features at Clean Cruising designed to help with your cruise research are built around technology Google's made available. So we're particularly pleased to have been selected as one of a handful of finalists to showcase their wares at the upcoming Google Developer Day in Sydney on 18 June. Google runs this event in over a dozen cities around the globe, providing an opportunity for developers to meet with Google's team and hear about some of the creative ways Google and the larger web community make use of their various platforms. If you happen to attend be sure to say g'day.

31 May 2008 - 3D Cruises in your webpage

Google announced the release of their Google Earth plug-in for web browsers, a very exciting development that many people have been eagerly waiting for. As the only site to plot every cruise route, we jumped straight in to enable this functionality at the main itinerary pages. Here's a Costa cruise in the Med, you'll notice a new "Earth" button in the top right corner of the map. Clicking it will first prompt you to install the Google Earth plug-in, after which you'll be able to explore your favourite cruise in a familiar 3D environment. Try zooming in a few levels and you'll see building models appear in many of the world's ports! More to come soon, stay tuned... update - we've come across a few bugs with the plug-in, and just learnt it doesn't play too friendly with Firefox 3, once these issues are ironed out we'll add the Google Earth plug-in back into the maps.

27 May 2008 - Cruise Countdown Gadget released

We know what it's like to count the days until your next cruise holiday, which is why we built a handy little web gadget that keep track. This beta version can be added to your Google homepage and it won't be long before you'll have a version to add to your own blog or website. Unlike other cruise countdown tools, ours is the only one to showcase your cruise on a mini Google Map too. Give it a try here and let us know what you think!

23 May 2008 - Introducing Two New Cruiselines

There's not many mid-size ships (500-1200 passengers) deployed these days, which is why we're particularly excited to add Azamara Cruises and Oceania Cruises to the site. Both offer excellent value for money and a good mix of itineraries to consider.

7 May 2008 - NEW Cruise Search is live!

For much of the past 12 months, we've steadily been increasing the depth of cruises you can choose from. Now that we showcase over 7,500, we decided it was time to focus on making it quicker and easier to find the right cruise from such a large list. Following months of development and testing, we're very excited to launch our new cruise search. Powerful filters let you very quickly refine a list of cruises down to just the few that meet your critieria. Give it a try and send us your feedback!

26 Apr 2008 - Site update - over 1,800 new itineraries added for 2009/10

New season cruises from Holland America, Silversea, Seabourn, Costa and Princess Cruises' Europe season are now avaialble at the site, with many earlybird discounts in the 30-50% range. Seasoned cruisers know to get in early to secure the best cabin as availability can dry up quick.

18 Mar 2008 - Shortlisted for Travelmole Asia's 2008 awards

Clean Cruising was nominated in the Web 2.0 category (click to view Wikipedia's description) which also included World Heritage Angkor and Global Travel Blog with TV Trip announced as the winner. As the only cruise site among 11 categories, this nomination helps identify Clean Cruising as a leading innovator in the online cruise landacape.

10 Mar 2008 - Added Carnival Cruiseline, Costa Cruises and Yachts of Seabourn

This update sees an additional 40 ships, ranging from the small ship luxury of Seabourn to the family fun aboard a Carnival vessel, not to miss the Italian influenced Costa line. Guests at Clean Cruising now have over 6,700 departures to choose from.

2 Feb 2008 - Added Royal Caribbean and Coral Princess

Cruise lovers now have a lot more choice following the addition of Royal Caribbean's 23 ships. RCI as they're known visit a lot more than just the Caribbean, with a number of vessels deployed to Europe, Asia and Australia. They provide an excellent value big ship experience, with onboard innovations including their rock-climbing wall. Coral Princess Cruises is a successful Australian based small ship expedition cruiseline, visiting The Kimberleys, Papua New Guinea, Great Barrier Reef, Melanesia and more.

15 Jan 2008 - Clean Cruising selected as Top Pick at Google Maps Mania

As the first site to seriously tackle the challenge of mapping the world's cruise routes, it's always great to get some extra recognition. We've read there's over 150,000 sites that use Google Maps and to be one of the 40 to make this list is pretty exciting. Other sites on the list include some of the originals like HousingMaps and ChicagoCrime, and if you like your coffee there's the trusty Starbucks Coffee Finder.

7 Jan 2008 - Big site update to start the new year

Added over 2,000 new itineraries from Celebrity Cruises, Crystal Cruises, Cunard Line, Holland America, Princess Cruises, P&O Cruises, Regent Seven Seas & Silversea Cruises.

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Read news from 2007.