Anyone who's spent any time in the travel industry knows that the sector is riddled with silos. Folks in the cruise, hotel or airline industries rarely collaborate or exchange information with people in other sectors. 

But then Travel Massive entered the scene and began busting some silos.

The global organization was founded in 2009 in Australia by Ian Cumming  and Alicia Smith, who's now a marketing manager with World Nomads. It started out as a way to connect travel professionals — travel bloggers, travel and tourism companies, startups and travel journalists — with the goal of creating a series of meetups where people could connect, socialize and exchange knowledge. 

How do we communicate with family, friends and our social networks during a cruise? A study just released by MTN Communications shows a dramatic shift in our device usage in just four years' time.

We were impressed enough by the findings that Christine Davila of our team whipped up the infographic above — please share on your own social networks or blog!

Last year two of our team members attended Cruise Shipping Miami for the industry's annual trade show. I'll be attending again as media on March 17-19, along with our senior marketing manager.

This year's event is especially noteworthy for three reasons:

• We're officially launching the Cruiseable website on Wednesday, March 18. (If you're reading this blog post, you're already here!)
• We're releasing the Cruiseable mobile app for the iPad on Wednesday, March 18. Download it here.
• We're hoping to add additional team members. 

I'll bring my fancy-schmancy Canon 5D and 70-200mm lens again this year — I get one heck of a workout lugging it around!

Here's my Flickr set from last year's event, and one of my favorite shots at top with three representatives of the Peru pavilion.

In the spirit of transparency that we're trying to bring to the cruise and travel space, we're sharing with you many of the programming bugs that our startup is working quickly to vanquish.

And we'll also share some of what's ahead for Cruiseable. Have other ideas of what you'd like to see in a cruise discovery & booking engine and mobile app? Please share in the comments! We'll update this list every week.

It’s time to plan your next cruise with our annual list of some of the best ships to set sail this year. We’ve pulled together a panel of experts — including Bill Panoff, publisher and editor-in-chief of Porthole Cruise Magazine; Jason Leppert, editor of PopularCruising.com; and Anne Campbell, editor of CruisingFromNewYork.com and ShipCriticBlog.com — to help choose our coveted Travel’s Best Cruises 2015. See what cruise lines were picked for specific categories such as Best Caribbean Cruise, Best Luxury Cruise, Best Mediterranean Cruise and Best Theme Cruise. And find out which cruise ship made our list for the second year in a row.

You can get a good workout during your cruise at the best fitness areas on Norwegian Cruise Line ships. The ships, like Norwegian Breakaway and Norwegian Getaway, have a wide variety of activities to challenge you.

Freestyle cruising means you can enjoy your vacation the way you want. On your own schedule. If you're like me, that schedule is going to include a daily workout or at least some physical activity to let you know you properly enjoyed a complete day. Norwegian Cruise Line offers freestyle "Cruise like a Norwegian" sailings that its legions of fanatics enjoy so much. And Norwegian Cruise Line includes a range of cool fitness options onboard its ships -- especially its newest vessels. 

Cruise veterans are going to think I am crazy; I am pretty much resigned to that fact. Our family however has NEVER been on a cruise before, not just a Disney Cruise Line cruise, but any cruise. So when my husband and I decided we would like to try one for our next “Disney trip” I hit the internet like a madwoman soaking in as much Disney Cruise Line knowledge as I possibly could.

There were a lot of things I knew just from being in the Disney trip planning community (yes there is a community and it’s awesome! ha ha) but there were so many things that, as a Disney Cruise Line rookie, I had no idea about.