[gonzobonzo]

> but "don't take that long haul to where you've dreamed of your whole life" is a significantly less practical pitch than "well if you want to see the Caribbean spend more time there by taking a more eco-friendly flight rather riding on a cruise ship".

This framing is already putting a pretty strong bias into it. Your preferred vacation is something "you've dreamed of your whole life," while their preferred vacations is simply how they prefer to "ride" to a location.

One could also say that "don't take that cruise you always dreamed of your whole life" is a significantly less practical pitch than "well if you want to go to a beach, go to a beach closer to your house."

Both of that statement and yours treat something that most people consider extremely important (being on a cruise, having the beach they go to be in South East Asia) as being merely incidental to the vacation itself.

[zamadatix]

I'd agree there is bias but argue the framing is highlighting, not introducing, it. E.g. how many wanting to take a cruise are just as happy with Norfolk, Baltimore, and Wilmington as stops vs San Juan, St. Thomas, and St Martin? I'm sure someone out there is but they are certainly going to be the minority. In a cruise where you are going is still a central part of the vacation and you can keep a large part of that even if you remove the ship. In your alternative you're throwing out the entire trip with the bathwater - one is a compromise, the other a full sacrifice. No matter how you want to slice that it's a much more grating pitch for the average tourist.

[gonzobonzo]

> I'd agree there is bias but argue the framing is highlighting, not introducing, it. E.g. how many wanting to take a cruise are just as happy with Norfolk, Baltimore, and Wilmington as stops vs San Juan, St. Thomas, and St Martin?

That's like arguing that if someone wants to go to Phuket instead of an industrial town in Thailand, then going to Thailand isn't that important to them and they should just go to Cancun. You can't really say "unless you're happy with _any_ vacation that has X, you don't care that much about X." For almost everyone, a vacation relies on several different elements coming together.

[zamadatix]

The point was "most people dream of cruises to interesting places, not cruises themselves" and your response was "people don't want to take vacations to boring places either"? Nobody is actually going to go to boring places in these examples, they'll almost always pick the most interesting destinations because that's the most important part and the cruise ships or other things are the smaller parts. The flight is intentionally irrelevant to itself in vacations - it's the fastest (and less CO2 heavy than cruise) way to get to the important part. If the cruise were the more important part of the vacation then destination wouldn't matter was all the example was about so applying it to the destination doesn't make sense (the destination can't have a different importance than the destination).

That doesn't mean the utility of a cruise is 0, it means the utility of the cruise is less than the utility of the destination for the vacation -> an easier pitch to change the cruise rather than the destination. Say your goal is to convince someone to reduce emission for their vacation, how would you intuitively rank these in terms of "easiest pitch" to "hardest pitch" and why?

A: "I know you've always want to go to St. Martin but you should look into flying rather than a cruise because..."

B: "I know you've always wanted to go to St. Martin but you should look into <some closer beach they can drive or fly to> because..."

C: "I know you've always wanted to go to Asia but you should look into a flight to Cancun because..."

To me it I'd go the easiest is A (they still go where they want to go), then B (they still go somewhere interesting), then C (they go to the least interesting place). The latter 2 both pretty hard sells though. I'm curious if you rank B and C as easier pitches? If so that could possibly be part of the answer to your original question about why you expect people to talk about flights more than you hear? I.e. I'm not saying you must agree just that perhaps there is a difference of opinion vs most people driving that split.

[gonzobonzo]

> The point was "most people dream of cruises to interesting places, not cruises themselves" and your response was "people don't want to take vacations to boring places either"

No, my is that just as many people dream of going on the cruises themselves, so you can't simply slice that out and say "transportation is transportation" just like you can't simply slice out the fact that the beach someone is going to is in Thailand and not closer by. It may be an incidental part of the vacation fro some people, but the people paying more to go to Thailand are doing it because Thailand is important to them, and the people paying more to be on a cruise are doing it because a cruise is important to them.

I understand that people who don't cruises might not understand that, but that's not terribly surprising, is it? The people who do will pay vastly different prices depending on the ship they're going on, and some people say they don't even get off on certain destinations and stay aboard the ship. Depending on the individual, the destination is more incidental than the ship. This is also obvious if you notice that when people take a cruise, they are significantly decreasing their time at these destinations in order to increase their time at on the cruise, which wouldn't make any sense if the cruise was just a means to get them to a destination.

At the very least, people should notice all the people who will pay money to have a boat take them around in a circle for an hour, and realize that some people do really like just being out on the water (though cruises are usually much more than that, but it's another topic).