Posts Tagged ‘Vision of the Seas’

Paying Homage to Our Older Ships As They Continue Delivering the WOW

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Our readers have expressed a lot of interest in Legend of the Seas (above), in particular and the role of the older ships in the fleet in general.  When you think about how many guests have had a great Royal Caribbean vacation on Monarch of the Seas, Majesty of the Seas, Legend of the Seas, Splendour of the Seas, Grandeur of the Seas, Rhapsody of the Seas, Enchantment of the Seas and Vision of the Seas since they were introduced in the period from 1991 to 1998, it’s no wonder.  The bottom line is these ships are still very important to our brand and to our company.  

Consider Monarch of the Seas and Majesty of the Seas, each doing 3 & 4 night cruises to the Bahamas.  Each ship takes about 2,500 guests on a cruise twice a week.  The two ships together carry 500,000 of our guests each year, including an important percentage of our first time cruisers.  We revitalized each of these ships in recent years and are glad to have done so. 

The other six ships, mentioned above, comprise the Vision Class.  Some of our veteran cruisers know instinctively that this “class” is really more about cousins than siblings.  Essentially, the class consists of three pair of two ships.  Legend and Splendour were built in France in ‘95 and ‘96.  Grandeur and Enchantment were built in Finland in ‘96 and ‘97.  Rhapsody and Vision were built in France in ‘97 and ‘98.    Of these, only Enchantment thus far has been revitalized not to mention stretched.  

While we don’t have anything to announce in the way of revitalizations, the Vision Class ships are clearly important to our expanding business.  Legend is in Asia, Rhapsody will soon be back in Australia, Splendour and Vision are headed to Brazil in a few months, and Grandeur will be in the Mediterranean next summer.  We are attracting many first time cruisers from high potential countries by placing these ships in or near their home markets. These same itineraries also offer a great diversity of opportunity for our experienced cruisers to explore the world with Royal Caribbean.  We spend a lot of time and effort working with our ship teams so they can deliver the “Wow” to widely varying guest mixes.  Our satisfaction ratings this year underscore that our shipboard colleagues are meeting this challenge well. 

Even as we are in the homestretch of preparations to take delivery of Allure of the Seas, our team is highly cognizant of the valuable role that our older ships play in Royal Caribbean’s world.  We look forward to having them in our fleet for the foreseeable future.  Please feel free to write and tell us your favorite Vision Class moments.

BY:Adam|2nd September, 2010 15 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