Emma Le Teace (Emma Cruises)

Emma Le Teace is a popular cruising YouTuber.

She has 305K subscribers on her YouTube channel, ‘Emma Cruises.’

Also, Emma is a blogger.

Love for cruising-

At 11, Emma along with her family took her first cruise.

She and her brother, parents, cousins, aunties, uncles and grandmother flew to onboard the Norwegian Spirit and cruised to Alaska and Hawaii.

Thanks to this family trip, Emma fell in love with cruising.

She was amazed by the huge atrium and restaurants, food, waterfalls, pools, lifts in the commodious ship.

Since then, Emma started regularly cruising with her family on different cruise lines.

Education-

In 2012, Emma joined University of Brighton in Brighton, England to study for a Joint Honours in Mathematics and Business.

She graduated in 2015 with first grade.

Emma Cruises-

Since a young age, Emma has been cruising on the cruises of Norwegian Cruise Line and MSC Cruises and found them to be very relaxing.

In 2016, for the first time, she cruised on a Cunard Line cruise and even though she enjoyed it, she was surprised to find it not very relaxing, thanks to the strict dress codes.

As Emma was baffled by the experience, she wanted to share it with the world.

So, in 2016, she started her website Emma Cruises (initially she named her website as ‘Cruising Isn’t Just For Old People’) and started sharing her cruising experiences.

Through her website, Emma wanted to convince her friends to experience cruising and bust some of the common myths about cruising like cruising is expensive, boring, unsafe (thanks to Titanic) and is for elders.

YouTube channel-

Even though Emma watched the videos of ‘CruiseTipsTV’ and ‘Tips For Travellers’ YouTube channels, she never intended to become a YouTuber.

Later, she felt that she could communicate a few things better through videos than writing.

So, on 17 December 2016, Emma started her YouTube channel, ‘Emma Cruises.’

On 2 June 2017, she published her first video titled ‘10 reasons to cruise at Christmas’.

Initial struggles-

Initially, Emma was filming YouTube videos in her tiny 300 square feet flat (apartment).

As she didn’t have a dryer and any outside space, she used to dry her clothes in her tiny room itself which meant she had to plan to shoot her videos on the days in which she wouldn’t be drying her clothes.

As Emma found it difficult to manage her full-time job along with her side projects of website, YouTube channel and social media, she used to work on her side projects by staying up late or on the weekends.

Even though she found it difficult to work on her side projects and even though it took her a long time to see any success, she persisted.

At that time, Emma used to save up from her job for one big cruise per year and some weekend breaks.

Losing most of her revenue-

Eventually Emma realized the business opportunities of her website and YouTube channel and created a course by the name Cruise For Less and started doing consultations on cruise related things and YouTube strategies.

Apart from these, she also started earning money through advertisements on her YouTube videos, affiliate marketing and receiving donations through Patreon.

Everything was going well until the COVID-19 struck and a lockdown was announced.

Overnight Emma lost 95% of the traffic on her website and also the views of her YouTube channel dropped as at that time people weren’t interested about cruises.

As advertisers stopped cruising related ads, she lost most of her ad revenue on her website and YouTube channel.

Embracing the change & succeeding-

As the cruise industry got closed down due to the lockdown, Emma wasn’t able to film videos of cabin tours and ship tours.

So, she changed the direction of her content and started making videos of cruise news and informational videos targeting people who have never cruised before.

Thanks to this change in the content strategy, the growth of her YouTube channel skyrocketed.

As of January 2024, Emma has 305K subscribers on her YouTube channel, 41.1K followers on Instagram and 134K followers on ‘Emma Cruises’ Facebook page.

In addition to all the monetization methods mentioned before, Emma also earns from YouTube memberships, selling merchandise, receiving sponsorships and Cameo.

In 2018, she was voted as the ‘favourite cruise blogger’ at the Wave Awards.

In February 2021, Emma won the Income School’s Ultimate Content Warrior competition.

She had been featured in CNN Travel, BBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, The One Show and The Telegraph.

Emma films her videos with iPhone 14 and also uses a DJI Pocket 2 camera.

Quitting her job to become a full-time content creator-

In 2020 and 2021, Emma’s couple of healthy friends suddenly became seriously ill and this made her realize the shortness and unpredictability of life.

This inspired her to quit her job which she wasn’t very passionate about and follow her passion of cruising and the content business that she created around it.

So, in March 2021, Emma quit her job and became a full-time content creator.

Benefactions-

In 2019, she joined hands with Marella Discovery, and a captain shaved her head in the theatre, and she donated her hair to be made into wigs for the needy children. She also raised more than £5000 for a cancer support charity.

Emma has a pet cat; Hudson and she raised over $57,000 by selling Captain Hudson plushies for Mercy Ships.

Her favourite cruise destination is Norway.

Emma’s favourite cruise line is Viking Cruises, and she also likes Norwegian Cruise Line, Marella Cruises, MSC Cruises, Princess Cruises, Celebrity Cruises and Cunard Line.

Her favourite cruise trip was from Singapore to Tokyo with Princess Cruises.

Emma’s bucket list includes cruising to Australia, New Zealand and Pacific islands.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Emma?

Share with me in the comment section below.

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