Not that you asked but my summer training is progressing well. Even at 6 a.m. it feels like I’m running in a sauna. I really appreciate that former UM Coach Mike Ward is willing to come out to the track once a week through the summer at such an absurd hour and oversee the workouts. I miss my faster running mates from the regular evening program at UM that resumes in a few weeks, but at least I have these few workouts where I can run in the lead position. Overall I am ramping up my workouts, trying to do something serious six days a week. Lately I’ve been doing a long elliptical workout even on the days I play table tennis, which is in itself a real 90 minute workout.
Adam Training
One of the blog readers asked how I train. While something must be going ok for my 5k time to have dropped from 24 to 19 minutes in three years, I’m sure I could train much more effectively than I do. Part of the challenge is my job and especially my travels which compel me to align my workouts and days off with my schedule. The other main challenge is creating the time to begin proper strength work which I need to optimize my racing capabilities. At any rate, I am trying to run four days a week with a mix of intervals, faster 3 to 4 mile runs and slower 5 mile runs, plus two days a week for 50 minutes at a time on the elliptical for cardiovascular training and to save the pounding on my back and legs. When I’m on the track it’s serious work for a 50 year old (at least in the opinion of this 50 year old). In the last week or two I’ve done a workout of eight 400’s in 83 seconds each, another workout of five 800’s in 2:57 each and a third workout of three 1600’s in 6:11 each. For an even more diabolical workout, once in a while I drive up to Vista View Park in Broward and run up a 290 meter hill 12 times in about 64 seconds each. The Park is full of serious runners including occasionally world class athletes.
I recently discovered two interesting things. One is that by medaling in the Sunshine State Games in June I qualified for a biennial national age group competition next summer in California. The other is that there is a national corporate track and field meet every summer in California featuring GE, AT&T, Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen, Texas Instruments and Safeway among others. If the dates work out I would like to take our runners out there. The times are good but we can compete with them. I’ll keep you posted. If you know of any meets specific to CEOs please let me know. It goes with the territory that people often ask me about or exhort me to do a marathon. That’s a future possibility but not on the 2010/2011 schedule. The longest I would try this coming year is a half marathon, and only if I think I can go under 90 minutes. It’s too early to tell.
My annual summer trip to Asia transpired last week. I can always count on two things to be true. First, it is logistically daunting, in this case nine flights and over 48 hours in the air and no stays beyond two nights in one place. Second, it is exciting and rewarding to work with our people in the region to spur the development of our brand and the cruise industry overall.
First I was in Singapore, our Asia/Pacific Regional headquarters. Jennifer Yap and her team have done a very nice job of establishing our presence and the team is looking forward to the return of Legend of the Seas for the winter season. Because Singapore (thus far) allows a large local competitor to require travel agents to sign contracts restricting them from promoting other cruise lines, we have consumers coming into our office to book their cruises directly with us. This is unique amongst our global offices and it was interesting to observe the dynamic between the consumers and our people.
When I first visited Singapore in 1990, it was a strikingly modern city with many gleaming office towers. With the recent opening of their two so-called integrated resorts or IRs, Singapore has graduated to a whole new level of 21st century sophistication. I stayed in the Marina Bay Sands, one of the two IRs, and toured the other IR which is on the island of Sentosa. They are very different from one another, with Marina Bay being more for “MICE” guests – that is, Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions – and Sentosa being more for families. Both IRs have substantial casinos and an array of top notch restaurants and other attractions including a new Universal Studios theme park at Sentosa. The big attraction at Marina Bay is the park that sits on top of the three 57 story towers. Incredible.
Then I shifted to China, traveling first to Shanghai, then to Beijing. In each case I spent time with government officials who are interested in developing the “cruise economy” as they call it; with port officials because the Chinese are seriously focused on infrastructure development; and of course with travel agents because somebody has to find customers to put on Legend of the Seas or there is no cruise economy. It was clear to me that Dr. Zinan Liu and his team have gained significant experience in their roles since I was in China a year ago. This is the brave new world and we have a lot of work to do to capture the huge potential of China as a cruise market.
One night in Shanghai I visited the World Expo with Dr. Liu and his leadership team. This is the World Expo of World Expos. It is to Shanghai what the Olympics were to Beijing. They are projecting 70 million visitors from May to October. Most of the visitors are Chinese but there are many international tourists as well. It is simply enormous. With the benefit of VIP passes we were able to see both the China pavilion and the Japan pavilion in one evening including dinner. Without VIP passes one would have to expect multi-hour lines for any of the principal pavilions. There are multi-stop bus routes inside the complex. It is really something to see the whole world come to Shanghai.
Another night in Beijing, I had a very different experience with an evening function we had for travel agents. What made it notable was that Dr. Liu had arranged for a table tennis table so the Chinese travel agents could torment me. I actually would have been ok if I had brought my own paddle. While everyone knows the Chinese hold the paddle differently, I had no idea that a Chinese paddle has a short, stubby handle to facilitate that grip. To make matters worse, the paddle had dimples on one side and a flat surface on the other side. I did not want to hit with the dimples, so I had to guess where my opponent would hit the ball so I could get the flat surface on that side. Oh brother. I won three of five matches under those conditions. Next year I will bring my paddle.
Finally, I visited my brother who lives in Japan with his wife, daughter and newborn son. My adorable niece mostly speaks Japanese but she knows a good number of English words. From her I learned that animals in Japan make very different sounds than animals in the US. I’m not sure why that should be, but I can now report that cows and dogs do not say moo and woof in Japan.
I got back to Miami exactly in time to see Spain defeat the Netherlands in the World Cup final. Congratulations to Spain. Our colleagues at Pullmantur in Madrid and in Royal Caribbean’s Barcelona office should be open for business again in a few weeks. Just kidding.
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 Seasin 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.
It’s wonderful when people tell you how great Oasis of the Seas is. It’s even better when your paying guests confirm the sentiment with their survey results. By a narrow margin over Liberty of the Seas in 2007, the overall vacation experience rating for Oasis was the highest in at least the last 12 years of Royal Caribbean maiden voyages. Our team is thrilled and rightfully so. Apart from the numerical outcome, there were nearly 1,000 Diamond Plus and Diamond members of the Crown & Anchor Society onboard plus a very large number of Platinum and Gold members as well. So the guests were rating the ship with very experienced eyes.
There was a very nice celebration last night at Richard Fain’s home with just over 100 of the key personnel who invested up to six years on the project. In addition to a number of our company’s senior leaders, we had many of the outside architects and designers as well as internal colleagues from Food & Beverage, Entertainment, Special Events, Corporate Communications, Marine Operations, Safety & Environment, Human Resources, Treasury, Sales & Marketing, Supply Chain, Guest Port Services and more. I know it’s stating the obvious, but there were bagpipers in attendance.
There is no rest for the weary. When the ship is in Port Everglades this Saturday, Richard, myself, Harri, Lisa, Bill and others will be walking Oasis from bow to stern and top to bottom, discussing all the customer feedback we have received so far, and what if anything we should do in response, either for Oasis itself or possibly for Allure. Even after it’s over, it’s not over. Such is the nature of our obsession with delivering the Wow.
I am at the St. Thomas airport after three enjoyable nights onboard Oasis of the Seas’ maiden voyage and then not so enjoyably missing my flight back to Miami. I’ll be back briefly in Nassau on Friday for the traditional plaques and keys ceremony but I’m finished cruising on Oasis for the time being. I hope you all get to cruise on her.
We have nearly 1,000 Diamond Plus and Diamond members of the Crown & Anchor society on this cruise. The loyalty of these customers to our brand is breathtaking. Many of them now travel together, design handbags and other accessories for each other and generally know more about Royal Caribbean International than I do. I had dinner the other night with four couples and one single guest each of whom has cruised with Royal Caribbean over 100 times. One couple is boarding a ship in February and will cruise nearly continuously until May. There is a bit of a competition amongst some of them to see who can get to 300 cruises first. I would be happy to get a week of vacation.
At the Diamond Plus brunch event, Captain Bill and I got a taste of what it’s like to be a godmother. There were paper invitations that were blank on the back side and that became the opportunity to have us autograph dozens and dozens of invitations. One family came with their official Oasis of the Seas inaugural poster and had us sign that. The best one is the guest who won a watch in the raffle. That guest asked Captain Bill and I to sign the little pillow that the watch band goes around inside the box it comes in. For some reason the acronym CEO wouldn’t come out on the pillow.
So there really is something better than bagpipes at the naming ceremony. Bagpipes all the time!! It’s amazing to watch and hear our in-house bagpiper stroll the decks playing that beautiful, haunting music.
Today was our last day at sea before the real cruises begin. The weather was awesome. There are about 4,500 people onboard but I’m not sure where they are. People continue to struggle to find the words to compliment the ship.
We had our 5th and final Common Ground session with those travel agents who were interested to come to Studio B to do Q&A with our executives. All the sessions were positive, as they have been in recent years. There are always feedback points and we are fine with that. I actually liked today’s session in particular because all five of us on the panel (myself, Captain Bill, Lisa Bauer, emcee Vicky Freed and Doug Santoni) had multiple opportunities to answer questions. That means there were a wide variety of questions including strategic ones. Well done travel agents. I always have three goals for sessions such as these: make people feel good about asking questions in front of their peers, make sure they know where we stand even if our answer is not what they would like for it to be, and make the audience laugh once in a while. Besides that the agents love the ship, they must realize through sessions like this Common Ground that I have a world-class management team helping me lead Royal Caribbean International. The tireless dedication and good nature of my colleagues is inspiring.
Yes I am still alive. This blog is good for a lot of things including creating profound feelings of guilt for not keeping up with the entries in the midst of the maelstrom.
It is Tuesday, November 24th. A big day. All the days have been big and we have completed three successful inaugural events for media, distributors, suppliers, industry partners, financial analysts, bankers, architect/designers, etc. Rihanna, Good Morning America, USAToday, ABC World News Tonight, Entertainment Tonight and so on. But today we have a confluence of two remarkable groups.
One group is the cream of the crop of U.S. travel agents. They are here for our three night Thanksgiving inaugural cruise. Even for a ship as compelling as Oasis of the Seas we didn’t expect they would leave their family Thanksgiving celebrations. So we offered them 5 staterooms apiece to transplant their family Thanksgiving celebrations to the ship. A few minutes ago I said hello to two of these family groups. What a beautiful thing.
The second group is a phenomenal array of the premier media, travel agents and tour operators from around the world. I just came up the elevator with several people from Indonesia and several people from Guatemala. Another beautiful thing.
More than 20 years has now passed since I was last a student, but I still feel as if the year has just come to a close with the advent of summer. Never mind that I’m not taking a summer vacation this year as we ramp up for the introduction of Oasis of the Seas in the fall. It isn’t just that my children’s academic year has ended. It’s that my “athletic year” has ended in terms of competitive running events. I’ve been competing the last three years after missing 25 years because my back wasn’t cooperative. Sometimes people ask me “how do you balance work and family life with working out so hard?” I ask myself “how did I balance anything for all those years without being able to work out?”
