Cruise Ship Boarding Goes Digital

An innovative cruise line recently announced it is enhancing the preboarding guest experience and making embarkation easier by adding facial recognition and vaccine verification programs.

Holland America Line confirmed on March 18, 2022, all U.S., Canadian and European homeports will be implementing these digital technologies.

mBark is a mobile system that enables guests to digitally check in for their pending voyage.

With mBark facial recognition, guests who load their photos and all necessary pretravel information to Holland America Line’s website before embarkation will be able to use the touchless system. 

Following a quick face scan, guests can move through the check-in process in about 10 seconds, significantly reducing embarkation time.

mBark will launch as Holland ships return to service and begin in other embarkation ports as the ships move to new cruising regions.

Based in London, England, SKO Systems designed and implemented mBark for the Holland America Line.

In addition to mBark, Holland America has implemented VeriFLy.

VeriFLY offers cruise guests the option to upload the required information to the app, including proof of COVID-19 vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 virus test results, providing a way to go through the screening process prior to arrival at the terminal. 

Once registration is complete, guests simply need to show the VeriFLY QR code or “pass” (digital or printed) to the check-in agent.

VeriFLY was launched on Rotterdam in March 2022 and will now roll out to other ships in the fleet.

As part of its “Worry-Free Promise,” Holland America Line confirmed in January 2022 it would continue to implement best practices for COVID-19 health safety, including operating vaccinated cruises and requiring a medically-supervised negative COVID-19 test before cruising.

In addition to COVID-19 vaccines, some destinations require proof of travel vaccinations such as polio, yellow fever, or measles at arrival.

Other cruise ship news is posted at Vax-Before-Travel.com/cruise.

Vax-Before-Travel publishes fact-checked research-based travel news.

Note: This news article edited a press release for clarity and was manually curated for mobile readers.