How does Euminia work?

The rating takes place as part of the checkout on board of the yacht or at the charter companie`s office using a smartphone provided to the charter guest by the fleet operator. This smartphone has the Euminia application running on it which you might think of as a kind of digital survey. The digital survey is child’s play to use and takes no more than around 3 minutes to complete. After completing the survey, the charter guest gives the smartphone back to the charter company, who then moves on to the next yacht where the process starts from the beginning again.
The evaluation is completely voluntary and 100% anonymous. No personal data is collected. The charter company cannot view and certainly cannot edit the evaluation on the smartphone.

" ... the survey is child’s play to use and takes no more than around 3 minutes to complete ..."

Once all the evaluations have been made, the operator connects to the Internet and sends all the data to the Euminia server. The data is then put through various tests to check its plausibility and prevent data manipulation. All of the comments are also read by a team of editors. As soon as the evaluations have been identified as genuine, they are posted in the area for logged-in users. The key rating areas, such as cleanliness, facilities, staff, value for money, and further recommendation are grouped together and placed in the public area of the site.

Security

Using real data is an essential requirement for ensuring that the evaluations were credible. Euminia is using new, innovative methods in order to ensure that the ratings come from charter customers and not from the fleet operator themselves.

Having the evaluation carried out at the end of each sailing trip ensures that it can only be carried out by the person who actually chartered the yacht. Evaluating so soon after the trip makes it possible to provide an objective score as this is when one’s impressions are still fresh.

A range of measures makes it practically impossible for the charter company to manipulate the surveys. Brand-new technologies such as voice biometrics are being used for this purpose. Existing technology had to be adapted to the special needs of the Euminia evaluation system. The human voice is just as characteristic and unique a feature as a finger-print or the iris. Euminia made use of this fact by asking the charter guest to give a brief sample of their voice at the end of their evaluation. These samples were transmitted to the Euminia server where all voice files from a particular location were compared with each other. This made it easy to find out if the same person gave a repeat evaluation.

This voice could not be used to trace the identity of the person involved as Euminia does not collect any personal data. At the end of each sailing season, all voice files were wiped completely.

As well as voice biometrics, Euminia also uses other technologies for identifying fraud, which were are not able to make public for reasons of security.

" ... A range of measures makes it practically impossible for the charter
company to manipulate the surveys ..."