Case study · AIDA Cruises
A communityfor the whole journey.
Booking and travel are often months apart, sometimes up to two years. Since 2016, the AIDA Lounge has given guests a daily reason to engage with AIDA: finding inspiration for an upcoming journey and sharing memories with people who understand their enthusiasm.
Concept, development and daily editorial operations by mark veys.
- Project / client
- AIDA Cruises · Gäste-Community
The project
A travel journal. A whole community.
Guests record their journeys for themselves. Others find ideas, answers and people to share their next trip with. The Lounge gives these exchanges a home within AIDA's offering.
Inside the Lounge · August 2026. Full app views to scroll through.
Drag or swipe to explore the screen. Click to open the AIDA Lounge in a new tab. Scroll with the arrow keys; press Enter to open.
Concept
Inspiration and conversation before, during and after a journey.
Development
The community on the website and in the AIDA app.
Ongoing operations
Further development, moderation and image assessment.
The starting point
The journey begins before boarding.
Up to two years can pass between booking and departure. During that time, there is often little to do in relation to the booking itself. The Lounge still offers a daily reason to engage with AIDA and the upcoming journey: authentic experiences from fellow guests, answers to specific questions and contact with travel companions.
After returning home, guests find people with whom they can share their favourite moments. For AIDA, this keeps the connection with guests alive between journeys. Four features support this exchange.
Before the trip
Questions
Other guests' experiences help with cabin choices, excursions and preparation.
At its heart
The booked trip provides the structure.
A travel journal starts with a date and ship. From the stored itinerary, the system adds ports of call, sea days and arrival times. Guests do not need to structure their trip manually.
Photos and texts are assigned to the relevant travel day by date. Individual moments become a journal through which other guests can follow an entire journey.
This reflects an important product decision: value for guests comes from connecting their experiences with existing routes and trips.
The journal reflects the specific trip.
Date and port provide the structure.
Drag or swipe to explore the screen. Click to open the AIDA Lounge in a new tab. Scroll with the arrow keys; press Enter to open.
Everyday conversations
A picture starts a conversation. A question helps the next journey.
The other elements make it easy to get involved and give different needs their own space.
A photo or small gallery, a location, a travel date and a short text are enough. Categories help discovery; hearts and comments start conversations.
A channel for each specific departure connects people who will actually travel together. They arrange excursions and share their anticipation.
Travel groups are available after signing in. The link opens the Lounge homepage.
Experiences with cabins, excursions or getting to the port remain searchable. Categories, an answered status and a highlighted best answer help visitors find their way.
Drag or swipe to explore the screen. Click to open the AIDA Lounge in a new tab. Scroll with the arrow keys; press Enter to open.
From guests, for guests
These pictures come from the community.
What guests capture along the way inspires others. Editors recommend selected moments in the Lounge; suitable images also appear in travel-planning contexts.
Guest photos from the AIDA Lounge · Selection from the reference presentation, August 2026.
Usage and scale
A service guests return to.
Questions and travel experiences remain valuable after publication. Usage data shows repeat visits; over the years, a substantial collection of posts and answers has grown.
Around half a million
registered members. This figure describes registrations, not daily active guests.
Many thousands
Lounge page views daily within the AIDA app, plus browser usage.
Several years
of travel experiences still available as moments, questions and answers.
Rounded figures. Membership: August 2026. Views: Adobe Analytics, AIDA app, 25 August 2025–23 August 2026. Page views are not visitor counts.
An example from the community
Experience helps with real decisions.
A guest asks about experiences with aft cabins. Others reply with cabin photos, deck plans and personal observations. In the end, she shares which cabin she chose.
The exchange makes the community's value tangible: answers come from people who have already experienced a comparable trip. The example documents a decision, not a general increase in booking conversion.
Since 2016 · Website and app
The community stays. The app changes.
The AIDA Lounge has existed since 2016 and was available both in the original AIDA app and as a standalone website from the start.
The previous app is being discontinued. In the new AIDA app, the Lounge is embedded through an in-app browser; individual moments from the community are already featured directly in the app. Selected moments also appear on aida.de.
These entry points bring the content to places where guests plan their journeys. The value comes from the community: the experiences, inspiration and conversations that guests share with one another.
A native slider shows moments and leads to the Lounge.
The community opens inside the app.
Drag or swipe to explore the screen. Click to open the AIDA Lounge in a new tab. Scroll with the arrow keys; press Enter to open.
Operations and curation
A large community needs clear responsibilities.
We provide daily editorial support for the Lounge. Posts and comments need a reliable framework; image selection needs criteria that suit AIDA. Development and editorial teams work on the same application.
Two mechanisms deliberately serve different purposes:
In the Lounge
The editorial star
Editors highlight moments for the Discover section. Within the community, this has become a mark of recognition.
In the app and website
Image assessment
It determines which photos suit the sliders in the app and website. AI-assisted assessment runs on our own hardware; editors review submitted cases.
Products
Moderation in conversational context.
Modary is our moderation tool for communities, chat platforms and blogs. It assesses posts in the context of the conversation and a user’s history. Rules and responsibilities determine which actions can follow.
Consider the context
Posts are assessed within the conversation, helping to interpret individual statements and recurring patterns.
Understand decisions
Assessments and their rationale are documented. Moderation teams can review and correct them.
Choose how processing runs
The model endpoint is freely configurable. Models running on your own hardware can also be connected.
What can be applied elsewhere
A reason to return. Even without a new booking.
The Lounge connects the anticipation of an upcoming journey with experiences from past travels. What guests share helps others prepare and gives them a reason to return. For AIDA, this creates a relationship that extends beyond individual bookings.
For similar projects, we first establish what ongoing value an offering should provide for its users. This informs the features, entry points and requirements for day-to-day operations.
Community moderation
How we organise content and ongoing support.
Operations and further development
Support applications for the long term and make targeted changes.