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Travelling by ship is an increasingly popular way to pass ones holidays reflected by increasing passenger numbers in the cruise industry. This does not just hold for maritime but also for river cruise lines. Increasingly young travellers who search for trip information online are attracted by this sort of holiday. Thus this paper examines the river cruise information provided online and analyzes the content provided by operators offering tours along the river Danube. Additionally an on board information system is evaluated by both, tour operators and passengers. The survey among the passengers shows that there is a strong willingness to use the information service, primarily determined by the usefulness and ease of use of the system. In summary, this paper provides a comprehensive dual view of operators and customers with respect to river cruise information systems.

Gaining insight into the consumer’s value-creating processes and structures is a crucial and complex task for marketing managers. In service industries this exercise becomes more difficult because there are fewer tangible product elements to act as substitutional cues for the consumer to anticipate the favorable or unfavorable overall value of alternatives. The means-end chain approach has been proven to be a valuable instrument to uncover how product attributes are linked to the consumer’s personality. This research technique, though rarely applied in the field of tourism, promises to shed light onto spots of cognitive processes that are still in the gray zone of the abundant service quality and motivational approaches. Therefore, this study investigates the relationships between product attributes, consequences from pleasure travel experiences, and personal values. Comparing the hierarchical value maps derived from correlation analyses (CA) and the association pattern technique (APT), it can be demonstrated that: (1) the latter methodology is not only suited for standardized “mass" interviewing, but highlights (2) a dense net of associations reflecting the traveler’s cognitive value map in a more consistent way than correlations from direct importance ratings.