Zmags' Prism Publicator enables MSC Cruises to deliver consistent digital content in 43 countries 

LONDON — With 12 cruise ships and hundreds of itineraries worldwide, MSC Cruises thinks big. That’s why the company pioneered the travel industry’s use of a digital publishing platform in 2011 by signing on with Zmags. Since then, MSC Cruises has expanded its digital content strategy by embedding digital versions of its engaging print brochures directly into its own and travel agents’ websites—a move that has expanded their reach and saved costs by decreasing the number of print publications the company produces each year.

It is critical for MSC to make its destination brochures available online because most cruise customers take weeks to investigate cruise options, and rely on mobile and social outlets, like Facebook, for online research. MSC Cruises formerly provided web-based information to potential customers with internally developed, Flash-based PDF builders. The challenge? The Flash PDFs were not cross-platform enabled.

Zmags’ Prism Publicator digital publishing platform has solved this problem. Built in HTML5, the MSC Cruises brochures deliver a consistent experience across channels and platforms, which is a critical component since MSC’s international customers use different devices, platforms and standards. Since it began using the Publicator Platform, MSC Cruises has produced 280 live publications pushed across 25 websites in 43 countries and in 18 languages.

“Zmags is committed to excellent customer service and continuous product improvement, and this gives us a great deal of confidence in the platform,” noted MSC Corporate Mobile Marketing Manager & Web Architect Antonello Fabozzi. “The release of the HTML5-based viewer was a huge upgrade in performance, and it has let us take our publications to the next level.”

MSC’s web content pageviews have increased by 22.7 million since implementing the Zmags solution. MSC also embeds publications as an app on its Facebook pages and has seen significant engagement on that platform as well. Since partnering with Zmags to reach a wider audience across multiple channels, MSC Cruise digital brochures have gained traction and have improved customer engagement, boasting more than 51.3 million digital publication page views and over 1.2 million unique visits since 2011.

MSC’s new 102-page digital brochure includes stunning photography, in-depth explanations of the company’s experiences tailored to suit the needs of its guests, detailed pricing and other information to help travellers plan their adventure. Going forward, MSC plans to provide greater access to its digital assets offline, which will help the company serve customers and prospects in countries that lack ubiquitous Internet access.