The other day Carnival Cruise Lines and a digital marketing agency called Razorfish announced the launch of a new Facebook application.  This new app is a new type of social commerce application that allows you to select, view, compare and share Carnival cruises with your Facebook friends list.

You can get the application on Carnival Cruise’s official Facebook fan page (www.facebook.com/carnival).  Once downloaded this application allows you to check out Carnival’s cruise inventory without leaving Facebook; details of the cruise  and even an invitation to book the cruise can then be shared with your friends with the simple press of a button.  On a website where many users post every time they get a drink of water, people will jump at the opportunity to update the world about an upcoming cruise.

This new app is a brilliant move for Carnival as it ties the Carnival Cruise booking engine into the most popular website in the United States; a move that is sure to be followed by the other cruise lines.  By leveraging the power of Facebook applications Carnival has created the industry’s largest sales force; with the best part being (at least for Carnival), this sales force works for free.

Currently Carnival’s Facebook page has about 250,000 fans that upon installing the app will essentially become unpaid affiliates for the cruise line.  The average Facebook user has over 100 friends.  Not all of those fans will be booking a cruise in the immediate future but Carnival is banking on the fact that most will at some point.  When that booking is made, information and invitations will go out to more than 100 people (the size of the average friend’s list).

My Viewpoint on the Carnival Facebook Application

From a business standpoint this is a brilliant move by Carnival Cruises, for cruisers it isn’t so great.  Let’s be honest.  With 250,000 fans potentially inviting 100 friends each on a cruise Carnival’s bottom line should grow tremendously.  I book a cruise and then recommend it to a half dozen friends who I went to college with; thats great business for Carnival, but other than companionship I get nothing out of the deal. It feels like Carnival is taking advantage of me.

The fans that make those recommendations get nothing out of the deal.  What I would like to see is Carnival institute some sort of program where the referrer could earn on-board credit or some other perk for additional bookings make through the invitation system.  This would create a win-win situation for both Carnival and its customers.  In fact, I would be willing to bet that had the cruise line not gotten greedy and instead decided to share the wealth this would be one of the fastest downloaded Facebook applications ever created.

You can bet Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruises will follow Carnival’s lead and if they decide to provide some sort of incentive it may not take long for them to eliminate Carnival’s first mover advantage.