Case Study: Marella Cruises achieves secure, ship-wide high-density connectivity and seamless onboard app access with Fortinet

Connecting Passengers to their Perfect Cruise Experience

Marella Cruises (TUI UK&I) operates a fleet of ships serving more than 200 destinations and wanted to boost onboard digital engagement with a no-download companion app, Navigate. Delivering reliable, secure ship-wide connectivity and the ability to govern passenger usage is hard at sea, so Marella sought a robust intranet-style network that would support heavy usage, protect systems, and make digital services easy for guests and crew to use.

Fortinet and channel partner Tes Media deployed a high-density wireless and security solution—more than 600 Fortinet APs, FWC 500D wireless controllers, a Wireless Manager and FortiGate firewalls—across three ships in a four-week window. The rollout delivered fault-free coverage, enabled wide adoption of Navigate without Wi‑Fi sign-up, supports ~2,500 users per ship (with capacity for 60,000+ connections), and gave IT staff bandwidth controls, usage monitoring and improved threat visibility.

Marella Cruises

Rowan Stallard

Electro-Technical Manager