Posts Tagged ‘Brazil’

Royal Caribbean - Changes to Deployment

Today Royal Caribbean International announced significant changes to the deployment of Mariner of the Seas beginning in early 2011. This is an important announcement and it deserves comment.

First, we will not be offering 15 seven night Mexican Riviera cruises from January 16, 2011 to April 24, 2011 that until now have been open for bookings. I apologize to our customers who had booked on these sailings. We felt obligated to make this change in order to align the ship’s new itineraries with the seasonality of traveling around the southern end of South America as well as the timing of the Brazilian and European cruise seasons. For customers who are affected by this change, we are offering compensation as explained on our website under itinerary updates or you can contact your travel partner for further details.

Second, just to be clear about what Mariner of the Seas will be doing as well as the implications for two of our other ships, here is a summary of the new information:

Mariner of the Seas

On January 16, 2011 Mariner will begin her odyssey to Europe. She will depart from Los Angeles on a special 16-night voyage to Valparaiso, Chile and then continue on as part of an exotic 14-night voyage through the Chilean Fjords, the straits of Magellan and around Cape Horn of Chile and on to Sao Paulo (Santos), Brazil.

Once in Sao Paulo (Santos), Mariner of the Seas will offer a short season of 6-night Brazilian sailings in addition to a special 8-night voyage which will be offered over the Carnaval holiday. On March 13, 2011, Mariner of the Seas will offer a transatlantic sailing from Sao Paulo (Santos) to Rome (Civitavechia). In Rome, Mariner of the Seas will offer a unique 9-night Eastern Mediterranean sailing followed by a series of alternating 12-night Holy Land and Egypt itineraries. This program will be offered from March 27, 2011 to July 10, 2011 and again from September 8, 2011 to October 14, 2011.

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BY:Adam|22nd April, 2010 102 Comments

Guest Post: Kicking Off Royal Caribbean’s 2010 Anchored in Excellence Visits

Delegation is the key to life. Well, maybe not all of life (especially since traveling light is also a key to life and not to mention “Happy Wife Happy Life”) but at least it is a key to keeping a blog going. I enjoyed delegating this space to Lisa during the crossing of Oasis of the Seas so much that I have been missing her entries ever since. Obviously the attention to Haiti in the last month has made everything else a moot point but now I would like to move forward with “Fridays with Lisa.” I don’t want to give her a heart attack so I’m not insisting on every Friday. But hopefully most Fridays she will chip in with her observations about some aspect of the wide and wonderful world of Hotel Operations at Royal Caribbean International.

Today, Lisa will be talking about her AIE visit. During the course of the year our top operations executives visit every ship in the fleet, as Lisa describes below. Although I do not do these visits myself anymore, I regard the 10 + years of Anchored in Excellence (AIE) program and my own 117 AIE ship visits as true highlights. I congratulate Lisa Bauer and Bill Wright for continuing to enhance AIE.

AIE 2010 Kick-off

Lisa Bauer - Senior VP, Hotel Operations

Lisa Bauer - Senior VP, Hotel Operations

A few weeks ago I spent a week in Brazil where we officially kicked off the Anchored in Excellence (AIE) visits for the year. We were able to spend time sailing with both Vision of the Seas and Splendour of the Seas, and as a bonus, we were also able to visit our office in Brazil.

AIE is a program where we visit each ship in the fleet, and meet with the shipboard Executive Committee, attend both hotel and marine departmental meetings, host an all crew session, as well as invite any crew member to come see us for any 1:1 topics they would like to discuss. When sailing with the ship, we also have the ability to see how guests are enjoying the ship, as well as how our crew is interacting with our guests. A personal highlight for me from this trip was a dinner hosted by Captain Tommy on the Splendour of the Seas where they served all local Brazilian dishes.

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BY:Adam|19th February, 2010 6 Comments

Royal Caribbean’s Fleetwide Holiday Season and Global “Winter” Programs

I hope everyone is having an enjoyable holiday season.

The microscope may not recede from Oasis of the Seas for a long time. But that reality doesn’t obscure that we have reached the holiday season for the whole fleet and our full global portfolio of “winter” programs. The word winter of course reflects a northern bias. We have Splendour of the Seas and Vision of the Seas in Brazil and Rhapsody of the Seas in Australia because it is very much summer in those regions. Plus Legend of the Seas is in sunny Singapore and Brilliance of the Seas is a few weeks away from its first voyage from Dubai. Still in the Caribbean, but very much part of our global expansion strategy, Enchantment of the Seas has begun our Panama/Colombia program.

The preparation for these programs is a year-round phenomenon. We are either delivering these programs or we are processing the lessons learned and developing the next season’s program. As we have grown our international offices’ capabilities, we look increasingly to our distant colleagues for feedback on product content, distribution and pricing. We’re very happy to have Americans and all nationalities cruise on these products, but I will note that the ships in Brazil have mostly Brazilians onboard, the ship in Australia has mostly Australians onboard and so forth. That’s no different than if you take a land vacation to such countries, but some of our guests are surprised to find this to be the case. In the 1990’s our worldwide cruises were primarily to take Americans on exotic itineraries. Now our worldwide cruises are for all nationalities with the usual case being that the nationalities nearest to the homeport are the largest % of the guest mix.

Switching subjects, I am coming up to my last race in the 45 – 49 age category shortly to be followed by my first race in the 50 – 54 age category. I am running well and hungry for best times and medals. There will still be faster runners in Miami in my age group, but only a handful. I will have multiple chances during the first quarter to run a 5k under 19 minutes. That’s the primary target. Meanwhile, my team at work collectively bought me a new table tennis table which is really nice of them. Thanks! They may really want to facilitate my table tennis abilities or they may want me to play more table tennis and leave them alone.

BY:Adam|26th December, 2009 8 Comments

From Brazil to Finland, and My Visit to see Oasis of the Seas

I just found out how easy it is to get behind on the blog. And it’s still summer!

It’s been a whirlwind two weeks starting with a quick trip to Brazil to celebrate the opening of our company office in Sao Paolo. One thing that always surprises me is when I say something at a function and then see it in print thereafter. I said to the people at the evening function “Brazilians love Royal Caribbean and Royal Caribbean loves Brazilians.” A week later that quote showed up as the headline of an article about my visit. Fortunately the statement is true. As an aside, Brazilians really, and I mean really, love to party. Our office opening celebration was a truly festive affair. I tried to stay as long as I could but I couldn’t even manage to stay as long as the wife of our country director. And she gave birth two days later!

Just two days after that I was on my way to Finland to see Oasis of the Seas in the shipyard in Turku. I hadn’t been there since the keel laying so it was my first time seeing the ship in real life. If that seems strange to you please remember that our Chairman & CEO Richard Fain, the author of the Oasis-centric blog on oasisoftheseas.com, practically lives at the yard (STX Europe). In fact he’s there again as I write this two weeks later. Richard and I and the senior management of Royal Caribbean International visited the ship together to make sure we were all on the same page with our understanding of Oasis as we approach the delivery and inaugural period.

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BY:Adam|31st August, 2009 17 Comments