The efficiency of the continental European transportation cruise ship companies. A slack based DEA application

The cruise sector grew by 200% in the decade 2007-2017, especially in North America and Europe. The European cruise market is one of the largest cruise markets in the world, ranking only behind North America for market revenue. Around 6.7 million passengers were carried on cruises in Europe in 2016. In the wider European economy, the cruise industry has a major economic impact; for the manufacturing industry alone, the cruise sector directly contributed 6.1 billion euros in durable goods and 1.9 billion euros in non-durable goods in 2015. The research aims to investigate the relative efficiency of the 148 continental European transportation cruise ship companies via DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) Slack Based model. Our findings suggested that the management of transportation cruise ship companies does have to benefit from the understanding on how to direct their actions by allowing companies to the right proportions and size. Limitations and, therefore, future research will focus on the size dimension.