More From My Time Onboard Oasis of the Seas

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.

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BY:Adam|30th November, 2009 15 Comments

From Oasis’ Inaugural Events to Answering the Question, “How Do You Do This?”

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.

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BY:Adam|24th November, 2009 8 Comments

Announcing Oasis of the Seas’ Seven Godmothers

It’s a great honor for a cruise line to identify a Godmother and have her name a ship. So why not have seven? Royal Caribbean International is ready to release the names of our seven wonderful Oasis of the Seas Godmothers, one for each of Oasis’ seven neighborhoods. All day tomorrow (Wednesday, November 18th), we will communicate via oasisoftheseas.com, Facebook and Twitter the names of the seven Godmothers. The naming ceremony will take place at sea off Ft. Lauderdale on Monday, November 30th.

BY:Adam|17th November, 2009 4 Comments

Guest Post: “Honestly it’s truly amazing.” Waiter, Jacques de Kock, Describes His Arrival to 150 Central Park

Oasis of the Seas is home at beautiful Terminal 18 in Port Everglades. Our Sales Force is immersed in its National Sales Meeting onboard. Lots of work continues to take place on the ship’s appearance and facilities. The ship looks fabulous, especially Central Park, yet we had no trouble discussing unfinished items for over 90 minutes yesterday. That’s the nature of this business – there’s always more. We start entertaining in less than 60 hours.

Previously one of our waiters, Jacques de Kock, provided a guest entry about how he came to be a member of the team on Oasis. Apparently he likes doing my work for me as he has authored another entry which I include here. You can be sure we did not put words in Jacques’ mouth, as we could never write anything as ebulliently positive as what Jacques has written. Thanks Jacques.

This is a follow up on a report I wrote about my past 2 years in the Royal Caribbean company.

I explained my career so far and how I managed to get the opportunity of coming to the Oasis of the Seas, using the trainings which the company provided to me.
So I left from vacation on my way to Turku, Finland. I reached Turku, and a RCL representative welcomed me and brought me to the ship. One thing unfortunately the company couldn’t account for was the freezing cold. I reached the ship which luckily has air conditioning though. When I saw the ship I was left breathless. Honestly, this is a architectural masterpiece. Massive yet beautiful. I wish everyone could see it.

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BY:Adam|17th November, 2009 4 Comments

Guest Blog: The Oasis of the Seas Crew is Ready!

Friday was a glorious day for Royal Caribbean International with sunny skies greeting the arrival of Oasis of the Seas to Port Everglades. The crew looked marvelous around the top of the ship as she entered the harbor. Our executives were hosted by the top people at Nova Southeastern University who have a beautiful piece of property at the mouth of the harbor. There were loads of people who came to the area before 7 a.m. to greet the ship despite the sub-60 degree weather (translation: very cold for Floridians). There were many media opportunities covering television, radio and newspaper. After the ship was safely at Terminal 18, Richard Fain, myself, Lisa Bauer, Harri Kulovaara and other management walked much of the ship and we were impressed by the progress during the crossing. Our inspections will continue during the weekend. We are all curious to see the planting of Central Park in operation.

I would like to thank Lisa for her outstanding guest blogs during the crossing. It strikes me that this has been the first real visibility that hotel operations has had. Another benefit of the blog as a medium. Here is Lisa’s final entry from Friday night:

Lisa Bauer - Senior VP, Hotel Operations

Lisa Bauer - Senior VP, Hotel Operations

We are just hours away from our arrival into Port Everglades, and the level of excitement onboard with the crew is thunderous. Captain Bill and I hosted an all crew meeting in the Royal Promenade to share all the details of our arrival and the inaugural programs and let everyone know how important the role of the crew will be when we officially welcome our first guests onboard. The expression we used is “we will never get a second chance to make a first impression”.

I’ve been so impressed with how the crew has maintained their energy level over the nearly 14 days of the crossing. They have each had roughly 103 hours of training, which is exhausting in itself, but then they also had safety drills and their everyday responsibilities on top of that daily. However, everywhere I went I saw smiling faces, and they are so proud to be here. Even more dramatic, they are so proud of this ship. We have 2161 crew from 71 different countries, and somehow it all just feels like a community and family. Everywhere I go various crew members are telling me their favorite parts of the ship. For me personally, the time I’ve been able to spend meeting various crew members or seeing crew that I’ve met on other ships has been very special. I believe all of us on the leadership team believe the crew is our “secret sauce” at Royal Caribbean.

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BY:Adam|16th November, 2009 2 Comments

Guest Blog: In the Home Stretch - Oasis of the Seas

Lisa Bauer - Senior VP, Hotel Operations

Lisa Bauer - Senior VP, Hotel Operations

We are almost home and in the final hours of preparation for our arrival. Overall, we are in a really good place. After twelve days onboard, I thought it would be appropriate to have a nice casual dinner for the first time with my entire hotel operations leadership team, so I asked Frank Weber, our VP of Food & Beverage, if he could set something up for our VPs and Directors of both shipboard and shore side operations. There were a total of 15 of us, so I figured he would come up with something, and perhaps put a few tables together somewhere so we could have a nice teambuilding evening. (Frank doesn’t do anything half way, so everything was way over the top…)

We of course had to tie our teambuilding event into either a launch or a stress test, so it became both. We started the evening by trying our new enomatic wine machines on decks 4 and 5 in the dining room. These are self-service wine machines where you can taste 1, 3 or 5 ounces of various wines with various price ranges. The very novel part of this is you simply insert your seapass, and can sample a medley of either white or red wines. It was also interesting to spend time with Marco, who is actually the son of the owner and creator of Enomatic, and he told us how his father started the company in Italy in 2001 and how the idea of wine tasting and the ability to sample wines has become so popular.

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BY:Adam|12th November, 2009 9 Comments

Guest Blog: Meetings, Restaurant Openings, Hairspray, Ice Show…What a Day Onboard Oasis!

Lisa Bauer - Senior VP, Hotel Operations

Lisa Bauer - Senior VP, Hotel Operations

Today has been exceptionally busy onboard Oasis. Between all the meetings and general activities, it is really hectic. It really reinforces how hard our shipboard teams really work, because in their world, there is no such thing as a Saturday or Sunday. The only reason I knew it was Sunday was because I wasn’t getting inundated with emails from the office in Miami, and because the elevators say it is Sunday.

We had an executive committee meeting today, which is normally comprised of the Captain, Staff Captain, Chief Engineer, Human Resources Manager and Hotel Director. Since John McGirl and I are onboard, we were invited to attend as well. The agenda covered everything from planning our arrival in to Port Everglades to updates on how all the various safety drills were going to how the glass cleaning and painting was progressing onboard. We are also planning an all crew meeting that Captain Bill (he is back to Captain Bill again) and I will host to really get the crew fired up and ready for our arrival.

When I left that meeting, I went to the Boardwalk neighborhood for the grand opening of the Seafood Shack. I got there a little early, and in time to see our divers in wet suits, officially in the Aquatheatre pool for the first time! I can’t even describe the feeling of watching them diving from the platforms into the pool. They weren’t in costume, no music, just their pure athletic skill, and it was a bit surreal. We were also programming the fountains, and they are quite powerful. I’m not recommending sitting in the first six rows – you will get wet!

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BY:Adam|10th November, 2009 7 Comments

Guest Blog: Retail Therapy at the Coach Store on Oasis

Coach Store Opening - Ribbon Cutting

Last night was very special. The evening started with an art preview in the Parkside Gallery operated by Art Actually in Central Park, which is located right next to the Coach store. Our new art concept features the many artists that produced the art work on Oasis, as well as featured artists from throughout our fleet. The art program will offer a real enrichment element, as we will offer art tours, and have “artists in residence” that will sail with the ship at various times.

At exactly 7:27pm, I officially made the first purchase at the store.

The First Purchase at the Coach Store!


(I hope my husband Joe isn’t reading this blog). The store features the traditional Coach products, as well as the new Poppy line. Even Captain Bill, who I now playfully call Captain Storm, came to the big grand opening with his wife Kiki. I thought everyone would enjoy this picture of Captain Storm shopping! Our crew also loved the grand opening of the store, and we had to extend the hours we were open due to the high demand. Can’t wait for our guests to see how amazing the store is!

Captain Bill 'Storm' - Coach Store Opening

Speaking of “sweet” experiences, there have been lots of questions about the Cupcake Cupboard and the pricing of the cupcakes. We are charging $2.50 per cupcake or $12.50 for a half dozen and $20.00 for a dozen cupcakes. We are probably really under charging and will have problems keeping enough “stock” because we compared these prices to the hottest cupcake stores around and the going price for cupcakes is mostly in the range of $4+ per cupcake and $36.00 per dozen, but let’s see how it goes.

BY:Adam|8th November, 2009 3 Comments
CATEGORY: Uncategorized

Guest Blog: Behind the Scenes and Challenges on Oasis of the Seas

Lisa Bauer - Senior VP, Hotel Operations

Lisa Bauer - Senior VP, Hotel Operations

We’ve had some requests to share some of our challenges, personally and professionally, as well as a sneak peak behind the scenes. I guess I could start with the personal challenges. I’m in the dog house at home, because right before leaving for Turku, we got a new chocolate lab puppy, Coco Chanel. My husband is at home with the puppy, who apparently is a hand full, and he has to take her to puppy class on Saturday afternoons instead of playing golf. So, personally I’m not too popular. The other personal challenge I am having is I was training to do the half marathon in Miami in January. Due to the rough weather, it hasn’t really been conducive to going to the gym or running, so a little behind there as well. Other than that, life is pretty good. I’m so lucky to work with such amazing people, most of my team is onboard and it doesn’t really feel like work when you are surrounded by such talented and great people. Most days I am just in awe, and very proud, of what they are capable of doing.

On the professional side, I’m not saying we don’t have challenges, because we certainly have some…… Due to the severe weather, we are behind with the installation of bolidt (outdoor floor covering) on our outer decks and pool decks. We are working around the clock to ensure this work is complete prior to our arrival in Port Everglades. We are behind putting the scenery into the theatre because we couldn’t have our crew up on ladders or in high places due to the wave heights and the ship motion. Our crew internet hasn’t worked yet due to server issues, and we had an air flow issue in Chops and the smoke was blowing into the restaurant instead of into the exhaust. We also have some cracks in the jewelry store and the locks don’t work. These are pretty good examples of some of the challenges, all of which we will address.

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BY:Adam|8th November, 2009 1 Comment

Guest Blog: Despite the Weather, Preparations on Oasis of the Seas Continue

Captain Bill promised Lisa smooth sailing. Instead she has already qualified for her mariner’s license. She’s come a long way in a short time from Sales. One of our readers asked how many languages we speak. In my case, three: English, French and Philadelphia sports. Captain Bill is amazingly bilingual in English and Norwegian. Not only that but in his younger days he could run 400m in under 50! Really, how much talent should one person have? Back to Lisa:

Lisa Bauer - Senior VP, Hotel Operations

Lisa Bauer - Senior VP, Hotel Operations

Well the good news is we are heading further South and the weather isn’t horrific anymore, it’s only terrible. I never thought I would be happy to be in 20-25 foot seas, but its much better than the last few days at 40+ feet waves.

Regardless of the weather, the show goes on. Over the next few days, we are putting all 2,200 crew through a new GOLD training class. We are doing 15 different classes and they are being moderated by John McGirl, our VP of Human Resources. We are focusing on our GOLD service delivery, and how to have each crew member deliver the WOW in the various neighborhoods. Several of us have “volunteered” to be facilitators. We have seven facilitators in each session, and each group is assigned a neighborhood to discuss. It has been great to see the various crew members report out on what the neighborhood has to offer and how they will make our guests feel very welcomed. My phone is ringing right now, so I guess I am going to be “volunteering” again today for a few more sessions. John is very persuasive.

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BY:Adam|6th November, 2009 3 Comments
 

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