Regular visitors to Cruiseable know that we're constantly adding new features and functionalities to both the website's suite of tools and the Cruiseable mobile app for iOS. 

The latest cool new feature we just rolled out: Compare Cruises.

What it's for: If you're trying to decide between two or more cruises that look pretty good, use this tool for a quick side-by-side comparison.

How it works

Step 1: Browse interesting cruises: Use any of the four filters in the top right navigation: Destinations, Price, Date or Bliss filters. You'll see a page of search results for different cruises. Now just click or tap the blue COMPARE button for any cruise that looks intriguing, and start comparing! You need at least two to compare.

Normalizing Cuba-U.S. diplomatic relations creates new business opportunities for both countries. Carnival Corporation, the world's largest cruise company, is announcing it received permission from the U.S.

Walter Christen's insight:

Carnival Cruises received approval to set sail to Cuba starting May 2016

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Some interesting findings in a new report, "The 5 Most Surprising Shifts in the Travel Industry," from the global travel consultancy MMGY Global.

Above is the portion of the infographic most relevant to cruisers: the finding that young people are just as into cruises as older travelers. 

According to the MMGY findings, millennials, along with "matures" (seniors), now have the same level of interest in cruising at 51 percent. Young millennials find cruising an affordable and convenient vacation option.

Click on the thumbnail below to see the full infographic. You can

Background

Cruiseable is a tech startup, cruise discovery tool and travel publication out to make it much easier for people to find, plan and book a great cruise vacation. We have a team of accomplished travel writers and cruise bloggers with the mission of providing independent travel journalism that helps consumers with their travel planning.

We didn't know quite what to expect when we came up with the idea, two months ago, to hold the first Social Sharing Angels Lunch.

JD Lasica / Special to CruiseableFeastly is a social dining startup that lets you share a meal or organize private lunches and dinners.

But we did know that the current way of connecting promising startups with angel investors is pretty lame.

So it was a bit of a surprise that the unanimous verdict from participants was that yesterday's event was, in the words of George Arabian of Steelhead Ventures, "a superb idea that's so much better than the usual speed dating events" that fill the calendars of venture capitalists, angel investors and startup founders.

I haven't written a lot about Cruiseable's fund-raising efforts, given that readers are chiefly interested in our product, tools and services rather than our business model, but it's worth a blog post to capture the positive energy that resulted from yesterday's meetup, in case others want to replicate it.

What

If you received our invitation by email, you've been invited to a first-of-its-kind event: A lunch in San Francisco where you'll get to hear 5-minute pitches from the founders of four great startups.

Who

This event is for angels and early-stage VCs interested in the consumer Internet, mobile tech or travel sectors. You may bring a plus-one and invite colleagues and other investors, though we need attendees to RSVP. Venue holds about 25. See below for startup details. 

On the final day of the Seatrade trade show and conference in Ft. Lauderdale earlier this month, the last session featured a speaker who shared a fascinating look the emergence of Generation Z and how it promises to reshape culture and business for years to come.

While there has been lots of media attention lavished on millennials, who now outnumber baby boomers, you might not have even heard of Generation Z. It’s the moniker that analysts and writers are attaching to today’s tweens and teenagers, ages 19 and below, whose world outlook is quite different from that of millennials. 

One highlight of the talk by Marcie Merriman, executive director of Growth Strategy and Innovation at Ernst and Young, was the difference between whom the two groups looked to as celebrity influencers.

We created an infographic that spotlights the difference – please download it as a .png or download the PDF version, or share it on Facebook or your favorite social network.

You may have noticed the buzz that Cruiseable is generating with the Travel Lovers Rewards Club that we just announced. 

Any member of the public who joins will be able to save up to $250 per year on your hotel bills at more than 400,000 hotels and resorts in the United States and abroad. 

The cost for joining? Only $2.99 per month or $29 per year after a three-month free membership so you can check it out. For anyone who travels and stays in hotels, we think you would be hard pressed to find a better deal online.

In case you're skeptical (and we do want you to be assured this is the real deal), your membership entitles you to savings off your hotel fare at more than 400,000 hotels in the U.S. and abroad, including Hilton, Hyatt, Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons and Marriott, just to name a few.

I'll be sailing Nov. 17-27 on Viking's first ocean ship, Viking Star, to an all-star lineup of ports: Istanbul, Athens, Santorini, Dubrovnik and Pula, Croatia, Kotor, Montenegro, and Venice. Should be a blast, and I'll be posting updates on Cruiseable.

Meantime, it's been a busy summer and fall for the cruise correspondents and travel writers on the Cruiseable team. Take a look:

• Jessica Hartmann is on Crystal Serenity in the Mediterranean right now, calling on Nice, Monte Carlo, the South of France and Italian Riviera. Not bad. 
• Patti Pietschmann is on an Amazon cruise aboard Seabourn Quest right now and has been posting to our ILoveCruiseShips Facebook page. 
• Gary Bembridge will be writing about his recent arctic cruise aboard Silver Explorer and is on a P&O cruise right now. 
• Curator/team member Walter Christen is heading next week to Cozumel and Belize aboard Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas.
• New team member Gemma Price has sailed on Windstar's Star Breeze, the Paul Gauguin, Silver Spirit (to Italy, Croatia and the neighborhood), an Aqua Expeditions Peruvian Amazon cruise, Belmond's Road to Mandalay, a National Geographic Endeavour sailing to the Galapagos and  Emeraude/Paradise Cruises/Halong Bay Ginger cruises to Halong Bay, Vietnam.
• Don Bucolo just wrote about his cruise on Royal Caribbean's Enchantment of the Seas. And Don will be cruising away in 2016, starting with Norwegian Escape in January and Anthem of the Seas in April. 
• Danielle Fear, Cruise Miss,  has been posting away on our ILoveCruiseShips Facebook page after each of her recent cruises on Crystal, MSC Cruises and a few British lines. 
• Cruise ambassador Robin Lampert is just back from a Princess Cruises cruise to Halifax & St. John aboard Regal Princess.
• And writer Roberta Sandler will be aboard Norwegian Escape for Cruiseable writing about one of the new ship's first sailings on Nov. 9.

If you'll be sailing soon, drop us a line, maybe we can meet up!

We're big fans of Porthole magazine. So it was a pleasant surprise the other day when I opened the latest issue while on the treadmill in the gym and spotted their app roundup.

No. 1 on their hit list this week: the free Cruiseable app for iOS (iPhone and iPad). Check out the highlights on Cruiseable or download it from Apple's App Store. 

Cruiseable — both the app and the website — helps people discover, plan and book a great cruise vacation through the use of one-of-a-kind technologies, like our Bliss Filters and Compare Cruises tool, and independent travel journalism.

Whether you're a first-time cruiser or have hundreds under your belt, Cruiseable offers the following:

• Hundreds of travel guides to all the major ports in the world;
• Hundreds of feature articles from our crackerjack team of travel writers and cruise bloggers; 
• More than 10,000 gorgeous high-quality photos of ships and destinations; 
• Lots of special offers from our alliance with 32 major cruise lines (all the ones you've heard of and more) and travel partners
• Lots more on the way, and we'd love to hear from you what you'd like to see. 

Porthole is a 95% offline publication — remember print? The next issue arrives Nov. 10. If you're a cruise enthusiast, you should subscribe (like we do); it costs $19.95 a year. 

After six months of development, we're jazzed to announce that we've released the Cruiseable app for the iPhone.

Download it for free from the App Store.

Since Cruiseable's launch in March, we've been focused on giving people a much easier and visually rich way to discover, plan and book a great cruise vacation. Now, the new Cruiseable app for iPhone 5 or 6 allows users to research and book their perfect cruise vacation while on the go.

We designed the Cruiseable app to make it fun, informative and easy to use. As travelers search a variety of itineraries and guest experiences, our gorgeous, high-quality images whisk them away to ports from Juneau to Hong Kong. 

Carnival Corporation CEO Arnold Donald oversees nine cruise lines, each with a different personality and target market. The company he heads is a household name and a market leader, with about 100 ships in operation around the globe and a 48 percent share of the cruise marketplace.

And Carnival Corp. continues to grow: Nine new vessels are coming online in the next three years, and another nine have been contracted for after that. The company has built 30 new ships since 2007, Donald notes, and tallies 80 million passenger cruise days per year.

Donald recently briefed reporters in Miami on trends such as hybrid wi-fi, more personalization, more balcony cabins, variable pricing, increased presence in China and Australia, an eye on Cuba and other industry topics. In the process, he addressed three common myths about cruising.