The Week Starts with a 5k, a Visit to DC and a Look at the Approaching Delivery of Allure of the Seas

It’s a beautiful Sunday in Miami and I’m very happy to have run a 5k PR this morning in 19.17 (6.13 per mile). The course was long on my fancy GPS watch at 3.15 miles so the elusive sub-19 5k is coming closer. By the way, in a totally unforeseeable happening, last Saturday near Orlando I actually won a 10k race. Not just my age group but the entire race. I had a lot of ambitions in running but being the one running behind the guy on the bicycle was beyond my aspirations. Of course there weren’t the kind of runners I raced against this morning. But it was a memorable experience nevertheless. Speaking of good runners this morning, a 51 year old ran 17.47, a fellow 50 year old ran 18.12 and my hero, a 56 year old with an artificial hip who beats me all the time, ran 18.51. So I’m looking for sustained improvement. Older and faster.

It’s time to hang out in Washington DC again. I have several full days of Capitol Hill visits and Executive Branch interactions this week (unless it snows 10 feet again). Plus my Energy Security Leadership Council is meeting to discuss next steps in our effort to prod the government to improve the country’s energy security through various approaches. And I get to see my little sister who just moved from Japan to Bethesda.

Many of you have commented on the question Craig asked about Oasis’ Nassau call – whether to keep it on Friday as the last call or change it to Sunday as the first call. There are strong opinions on both sides but the majority favor changing to Sunday with appropriate lead time for implementation. We’re still deciding.

Due to what one of my law professors called the “relentless march of the calendar”, we suddenly have only eight months and change until the delivery of Allure of the Seas. We are often asked about whether there will be anything different from Oasis of the Seas on our new 225,000 ton baby. We have said no but we may have been a little hasty. We wouldn’t be Royal Caribbean International without doing a few things differently. I’m sure you’re not at all interested so we won’t keep you posted on this.

BY:Adam|22nd February, 2010 22 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

A Letter from Sam Davis (Burn Advocates Network) Regarding Royal Caribbean’s Relief Efforts in Haiti

While my blog lately has covered topics other than Haiti, the country and its people has not been far from my thoughts. We continue to transport pallets of supplies on each and every ship that calls on Labadee. The outpouring of support from the community has been unbelievable, with pallets and pallets of needed supplies coming into our warehouse every day from all over the country.

Below is a letter I received from Sam Davis, founding director of the Burn Advocates Network, whose organization is providing much needed medical attention to Haitians hurt and injured during the earthquake. We are thankful that we can continue to assist organizations, such as the Burn Advocates Network, that make a difference in lives of the Haitian people.

Dear Mr. Goldstein:

I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your company’s generosity. I was blessed to travel to Haiti aboard your Explorer of the Seas cruise ship last week. There, at their Labadee dock, your staff and I oversaw the offloading of over 65 pallets of medical supplies and emergency food. In addition, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines donated 200 mattresses, bedding, and hundreds of pounds of clothes donated by the crew for this relief effort. With the precise teamwork of the Explorer’s ship and ground crews, the entire shipment of 65 pallets was unloaded onto the piers, providing 60,000 pounds of aid. After a one-hour convoy, we reached our destination in Cap Haitien, Haiti, where not a single package was damaged, delayed, or diverted. In other words…

“From Dock to Doctor” in 6 days!

Many of these supplies went to For Haiti With Love, a 24-hour FREE emergency clinic specializing in burn care. In the last few weeks, they have treated thousands of earthquake victims. While in Haiti, I also formed a relationship with the Justinian Hospital run by the government of Haiti. There Dr. Andre Voltain, Chief of Medicine, and Dr. Jean-Gracia Coq, Chief of Surgery, informed me that they lacked an oxygen generator and had only one x-ray machine, a beat up C Arm, which had been down for several weeks, scarcely the equipment expected at a hospital of three hundred plus patients. During my short stay, two gravely burned Haitian children had to be airlifted to Shriners Hospital in Boston because the equipment to save them did not exist.

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BY:Adam|18th February, 2010 9 Comments

Guest Post: Update on Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas’ Ports of Call

Now that Oasis of the Seas has settled into her regular routine I thought this would be a good time to get an update on the ports we are visiting. I’ve asked Craig Milan to give us a glimpse of how the ports are handling Oasis as well as some of the guest feedback.

I thought it would be good to update everyone about how Oasis of the Seas is doing in her ports of call.

Oasis of the Seas is now in the midst of her 11th voyage (10th regular Eastern Caribbean itinerary) and by all accounts the ports of call have been going extremely well. You may recall the ship’s current itinerary is departing Port Everglades on Saturday followed by two sea days before she arrives in St. Thomas and then onto St. Maarten. We then feature one more sea day with a Friday arrival into Nassau, Bahamas. For operational reasons, we switched up itinerary over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays by calling at Nassau on Sundays instead of Fridays. Both versions have worked well but it would be nice to hear from you all as to if you think we should stay with the current Friday call in Nassau or the Sunday arrival.

Our new terminal in Port Everglades, Terminal 18, is working even better than we thought. We have been able to maintain our goal of getting our guests from curbside to ship in 15 minutes or less. This terminal is easily the most efficient of any within our worldwide system. Not only has the boarding process been going well but also the departure from the ship. US Customs and Border Protection processes have been smooth and have enabled us to clear the ship on most Saturdays by 10:30 am at the latest.

In St. Thomas we are calling at the Crown Bay dock, which is a departure for us since we usually use the dock at Havensight for all other ships. Crown Bay has been working very well. All guests who have purchased tours from us are dispatched from a segregated area only a short walk from the ship. There are ample taxis and other transport available and the shopping at Crown Bay, whilst not as extensive as at Havensight, seems to have resonated with our guests. St. Thomas remains one of the premier shopping destinations in the Caribbean and our guests on Oasis are taking full advantage of the myriad of shops available to them.

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BY:Adam|12th February, 2010 81 Comments

Helping Haiti Move Forward

Haiti is several weeks post-earthquake. Royal Caribbean’s involvement is what one would expect from our company and people. The media has moved on to other topics or at least other aspects of the post-earthquake environment. Meanwhile, our people and guests continue to help. This will remain true for a very long time given Haiti’s needs.

I would like to thank the remarkable number of people who wrote letters, sent emails and posted on blogs in support of the calls of our ships and the importance of delivering supplies, maintaining economic activity and sustaining hope. Some of the most heartfelt communications came from our own employees including at headquarters.

Fortunately the number of employees who have not made contact with us has significantly reduced. For days it was stuck at 34 out of 50 and it seemed that we were facing a possible 68% death rate of our crew who were at home in Haiti on vacation. Now the number is down to 11 and none of those are confirmed dead. So we continue to hope that all of our crew are in fact safe but we simply do not know. Nine of the 11 have addresses in the Dominican Republic so we’re hoping some of the 11 were not even in Haiti at the time. Obviously we are trying to contact them to be sure.

The ships are routinely bringing in pallets of supplies and within a week we will have delivered over 1,000 pallets. There is a focus right now on getting three generators onboard to be delivered to schools in Haiti. Also by a week from now we will have contributed over $500,000 in proceeds from the revenue we normally earn during our Labadee calls. In addition, in aggregate our shoreside employees, guests and crew have donated $300,000 to relief efforts.

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BY:Adam|8th February, 2010 9 Comments

Guest Post: On the Ground in Haiti

There are a lot of reasons why it is a good thing John Weis is in Haiti. Most of them have to do with helping the recovery effort and partnering with Messrs. Clinton and Farmer. But another reason is helping me with this blog as the earnings call last week and the Board meeting next week have put me squarely behind the eight ball. Anyway, there really isn’t anything I can say that matches John’s eyewitness account from Port-au-Prince.

This is day two in Haiti and from what I am told things are getting better slowly but surely. When I arrived I was expecting to see the worst but the first thing I saw was two C-17’s landing from the US unloading pallet after pallet of supplies. There were other nations at the airport as well including Brazil, U.K., Israel, France and Canada all with troops on the ground and ready to assist in any way they could. What was amazing is that as fast as they unloaded, it was being taken out of the airport compound to those who needed it. There were huge encampments of relief workers only dwarfed by the camps set up by the people of Haiti that had lost their homes.

The other thing that struck me was the sheer number of people on the ground helping in the relief effort. Not just military, but ordinary citizens who dropped what they were doing and came down here to help, some on their own dime and some associated with organizations or governments. Three of the people I spoke with had jobs and families that they simply put on hold and came down to Haiti to help people they didn’t even know.

While I thought I was prepared to see the destruction as a result of the pictures you see on the news, being here and seeing it is another story. The destruction in the downtown area was complete and very focused in the area of the government buildings and the immediate surrounding areas, although there is no place you can go where there isn’t some level of destruction by the earthquake.

Destruction to a building in Haiti

The pictures fail to capture the magnitude of the destruction and the raw power it took to destroy some of these buildings that had walls 3 feet thick. Many people are living on the streets right in front of their homes because they are afraid to go back inside. Other homes, while still standing have huge structural cracks making them unsafe. Others have had their homes completely destroyed and you see them trying to salvage what they can from their homes taking what they can from their lives before the quake.

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BY:Adam|2nd February, 2010 17 Comments
 

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