Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect on price of different cruise industry characteristics from the point of view of actual prices. The analysis is carried out from the supply side but taking into account the real prices paid by customers. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses the hedonic price methodology. To develop this research, a database of more than 36,000 prices paid by cruise passengers and different characteristics of ships in 2013 was built. To obtain the results, ten models have been developed with significant adjusted R2 of between 0.85 and 0.93 making the models and results robust. Findings The results show that the main attributes affecting prices are the number of nights of the itinerary, the departure date, the number of days before departure the booking is made, the accommodation type and some facilities, such as casinos, cinemas and swimming pools. The results also yield a ranking of ship companies based on price and quality dimensions. Finally, the authors suggest some implications for management and new research. Originality/value This paper offers a new approach in the academic literature of the cruise industry in two respects. First, in its use of a broad database of actual prices paid by passengers – more than 36,000 observations. Second, in the application of the hedonic pricing methodology, widely used in the tourism sector (see the Methodology and Database section) but until now not in the cruising segment.

This paper suggests the possibility of incorporating the methodology of fuzzy logic theory into Harrod’s economic growth model, a classic model of economic dynamics for studying the growth of a developing economy based on the assumption that an economy with only savings and investment income is in equilibrium when savings are equal to investment. This model was the first precursor to exogenous growth models, which in turn gave rise to endogenous growth models. This article therefore represents a first step towards introducing fuzzy logic into economic growth models. The study concerned considers consumption and savings to depend on income by means of uncertain factors, and investment to depend on the variation of income through the accelerator factor, which we consider uncertain. These conditions are used to determine the equilibrium growth rate of income and investment, as well as the uncertain values for these variables in terms of fuzzy numbers. As a result, the new model is shown to expand the classical model by incorporating uncertainty into its variables.