Hello again.
Thanks for everyone who answered. I called my question “stupied” as it is like the type of questions that tend to cause “holy wars”. To give an example: apart from ships, I'm also interested in public transit, and I've withessed and, on lesser degree, participated a lot of such “holy wars”. Most of them were about differences between traditional tram/streetcar and LRT (light rail). There were discusion about whether some particular transit system would be better defined as tram or LRT, or even LRT or metro.
Now I come back to the subject, thus QM2. The duscussion took place here:
http://www.forum.infoflot.ru/index.php?showtopic=14347
Since the discussion is in Russian, I would translate most important arguments from both sides.
My arguments were the following
*QM2 travels from A to B, not in circle. One-way tickets can be purchased
*Norh-Atlantical line has few in common with most cruise lines: there are no exotical islands on the way, ship doesn't make intermideate stops
*There are no excursions in harbour included in the price
The contrarguments of my opponents were
*There are also one-way cruises, also transatlantical. The Southampton – New York line was even called “classial cruise line”.
*Cruises can be found almoust everywhere, not only in Carraibean sea and other warm seas.
*In general, excursions in the harbour are not included in the price of the cruise.
*Most people who cross Atlantic on board of QM2 do it for pleasure, not for business.
*Most people who travel on QM2 do it for travel itself, not to go to particular destination. They are the sea-cruises livers. If QM2 didn't excist, they would go on thransatlantical cruise of Royal Carraibean, for example. If QM2 worked on other line, they would travel on QM2 anyway. In short, most QM2 passengers travel on this ship, rather than travel to the specifical destination. They don't make choise between QM2 and aeroplane, they may make choise between QM2 and other cruise ship.
My contarguments to these arguments were:
*Other transatlantic cruises are quite different from QM2 transatlantic journey. For example, Royal Carribean ships stop in five or even more (up to ten) harbours during their transatlantic journey. These journeys are also longues than QM2 (I mean time, it takes RC ships up to two weeks to cross the ocean)
*Even if excursions are not inclided, still the journey is ajusted to the “for fun” type of tavel (I think you understand what I mean).
*The fact that the ship or another verhicle is used mostly by tourists doesn't make it automatically cruise vehicle. For example, San Francisco cable cars (compare to QM2) are used mostly by tourists, but they are still part of the city public transportation system, unlike sightseeing buses (to be compared with pure cruise ships)
*I would not make such statements about QM2 passengers travel motivation without any sociologial statstics. Neverthanless I'm shure that there passenger who travel QM2 not only for the fact of thavelling this ship, but to actually get to the destination. As exmple, I would give myself
Unfortunately I have not travelled QM2 yet, but I hope to visit USA ( despite all controversary, it is still very intresting country). And though I would like to travel QM2 most (great ship!!!), the sea voyage itself would not be the only purpose of this voyage. If I wouldn't be able to travel QM2, I would use aeroplane. I would not use Royal Carribean ships, since 14-days long journey is too long for me, while 6-days long QM2 crossing is just OK.