Is a Small Difference a Big Deal? Share Your Opinion!

Do you remember the old cigarette commercial that said its cigarette was “a silly millimeter longer?” Well, according to the laser measurements that our classification society DNV recently conducted in Turku, Allure of the Seas is 50 millimeters longer than Oasis of the Seas. In relation to something that is 362 meters long, the relative differential between the ships is much, much less than one millimeter was to a cigarette back in the day (do you remember cigarette commercials at all?). In fact, a 50-millimeter differential is certainly within the building tolerance for such a ship construction project.

But here in the 21st century, any advantage is one worth pressing, so Captain Hernan Zini and the officers of Allure of the Seas find it rather obvious that they are responsible for the new and undisputed largest cruise ship in the world. While the officers of Oasis of the Seas have confidence in DNV, they are nevertheless threatening to get NASA involved in making more precise measurements. In the alternative, as the lawyers say, Oasis’ officers say, “Who cares about 50 millimeters?”

Other than the above controversy, Allure’s delivery ceremony was flawless. I have been stating in recent entries that the ship was unusually ready. Having now witnessed its condition as well as the readiness of the crew with my own eyes, I’m confident to say we could have taken paying guests right from the shipyard on a real cruise. However, there are so many new features on Allure (DreamWorks elements, Chicago: the Musical, Blue Planet, Samba Grill, Rita’s Cantina, Boardwalk Dog House, Guess store, Britto art store and Starbucks just to name the major ones) that I’m sure our team onboard will make good use of their “alone” time. Speaking of which, Lisa Bauer will now commence her guest blogging from Allure as it makes its way across the ocean for Port Everglades for its November 11th arrival.

On behalf of Royal Caribbean, I would like to express our appreciation for the fantastic work that the STX Shipyard team and its subcontractors have done to make Allure of the Seas the beauty she is and to deliver her more than two weeks ahead of the original building schedule. While we do not have any more ships on order at this time, we certainly look forward in the future to continuing a mutually beneficial relationship that dates back to the construction of our first ship Song of Norway that the Turku shipyard delivered to us 40 Octobers ago.

BY:Adam|31st October, 2010 5 Comments

Allure is Ready to Entertain You. Are You Ready for Allure?

And all that Jazz……

I’m lobbying to change the name of our newest ship to Entertainment of the Seas. The variety of entertainment options is amazing, and was further solidified last week when we conducted two previews of Chicago: The Musical at our Hollywood Studio.

As we watched the previews, I was thinking about everything it took to get to the final run through. I recalled the vocal director, Loren, during the auditions in New York when we were trying to find the perfect falsetto to play the Miss Sunshine role. I also laughed thinking about Christi Coachman’s comments that we were sending her to audition long-legged dancers for Chicago: The Musical and 4′10″ performers for the penguin characters of DreamWorks. She said it was the most complex casting ever!

Chicago: The Musical was definitely raising the bar for us. There was an element of risk taking a 6-time Tony Award winning musical that is normally 2:10 hours with an intermission and making it into a 90 minute version; not to mention it’s an Academy Award Winning movie that set high expectations. We worked hard to ensure all the key elements of the story were included, as well as every notable song such as, “All that Jazz,” and “Razzle Dazzle.” I’m confident that our guests onboard will not miss a single “beat” (pardon the bad pun).

The cast is incredible. Christi certainly did find us the long-legged dancers, and the choreography is especially impressive. The content of the show is definitely more adult than what we’ve done in the past. As a result, we have attached a “PG” content on the show reservations section of the website and there will be a message in the onboard cruise compass. However, when we did the run through, we had a number of kids there. My favorite comment came from a 9 year old who loved the dancing and when he left the studio, he said, “I need my exit music.” You will just have to see the show onboard to get that one!

BY:Adam|29th October, 2010 2 Comments

Looking Forward to Your Topic Suggestions!

Two weeks ago I gave a keynote speech at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration on our customer engagement strategy. I enjoyed this opportunity for a number of reasons. First, the Hotel School is the premier school of its kind in the U.S. Second, my mother graduated from this school in the late 1950’s when few women undergraduates attended. Third, it was the first Hospitality Research Summit and there was a lot of enthusiasm at the conference.

While our customer engagement takes place primarily onboard the ships, my remarks and the questions from the audience mostly revolved around the growing influence of social media. The online environment has completely changed the nature of our interaction with consumers in general, and our loyal guests in particular. Only ten years ago, two-way interactions with even our most regular customers were limited to their time on the ships. With today’s communication portals the opportunities are nearly without limit. We take this into consideration in virtually every program, product and service, that we brainstorm and then either implement or reject. How we obtain feedback, how we launch new ships, how we convey new programs - all of these things have social media at their heart today.

So, it follows that I should ask what you would like to read about in this blog beyond the obvious topic of Allure of the Seas, more Allure of the Seas and even more Allure of the Seas. Don’t worry, Lisa Bauer is on her way over and has her laptop with her to keep you amused as the ship makes its way to Port Everglades. In any event, I look forward to your suggestions as always.

Personal note - I have started doing 5:30 a.m. sessions with a personal trainer on top of my other athletic pursuits. My trainer is both a physical therapist and a strength and conditioning coach. He is very capable and I think he is helping me. An alternative hypothesis is that he is killing me. It’s remarkable how much work one can do in 30 minutes without touching a machine. I don’t know yet how this will specifically make me run faster, but I was pretty happy about the whole thing the other night when I ran my 6th 800 meter interval in 2:45. If I suddenly stop writing the blog you can pretty much guess what happened.

BY:Adam|27th October, 2010 12 Comments

A Team Truly Anchored in Excellence

Anchored in Excellence. Three of my favorite words. We created this phrase 12 years ago to describe our aspiration for our people and our relationship with our employees and guests. It is about our company, not just the Royal Caribbean International brand. In fact, we developed Anchored in Excellence after we brought Celebrity Cruises into the company alongside Royal Caribbean International. The Anchor in Anchored is from Royal Caribbean’s crown & anchor symbol. The X in Excellence is from Celebrity’s symbol.

The expression of Anchored in Excellence takes many forms, from a simple credo card, to the annual visits of every ship in the fleet by senior operations management. I intend no higher praise than when I tell a ship, department, team, or person, that they are Anchored in Excellence.

The qualities of being Anchored in Excellence are exhibited every day in countless ways. Most of them in the delivery of Gold Anchor Service to our guests onboard the ships, but also shoreside across the globe, and in innumerable ways. However, every once in a while there is a major tangible expression of what it means to be Anchored in Excellence. One such example occurred last week, and I can summarize it by repeating here the internal letter I broadcast by email to our people across the company:

&nbsp
&nbsp

Dear Employees:.

Please join me in expressing my appreciation and gratitude to the crew onboard Legend of the Seas for their valiant efforts. .

Monday, as Legend of the Seas was sailing in the Taiwan Strait, it received a distress call from the Panama-registered freighter Xin Yi. Legend of the Seas noted the position and set a course towards the location. Legend of the Seas was the first ship to arrive at the distressed ship, which was sinking. Faced with very rough seas and heavy winds up to 75 miles per hour, crew members onboard Legend of the Seas immediately began search and rescue operations. Once the Taiwan Coast Guard arrived at the location, they began assisting with air and sea searches. Together with the Taiwan Coast Guard, Legend of the Seas was able rescue three of the crew and assist in the rescue of another nine of the cargo ship’s 22 crew members.

After taking part in the rescue operation for approximately 12 hours, the ship was advised by the Coast Guard that they would assume control of the search for the remaining missing crew members. Legend of the Seas resumed its journey to Hong Kong with three of the rescued sailors onboard. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the cargo ship’s 22 crew members and their families. .

To the Captain, Officers and crew of Legend of the Seas - we are extremely proud of your important contribution to this unfortunate event. Congratulations on a job well done!

This was an awful situation. Even the ship’s heroic efforts could not prevent loss of life as at least one crew member was confirmed dead, and at least three were still missing as of last report. But if Legend of the Seas had not responded in the manner it did, the outcome would have been much worse still. I cannot describe how I feel about Legend of the Seas’ team more powerfully, and succinctly, than to say they are truly Anchored in Excellence.

It is already a great accomplishment to make such an impact once in a year. But I am proud to say that this episode is only one of many such examples from 2010, which has also included our Haiti earthquake relief efforts, the opening of the new primary school on our property at Labadee, the repatriation by Celebrity Eclipse of UK citizens trapped on tour in Spain by the volcanic eruption in Iceland, and many local community service efforts around the world.

BY:Adam|25th October, 2010 12 Comments

A Compliment or Not? Cast Your Vote!

With the U.S. elections rapidly approaching, everyone is taking polls. The candidates leading the polls tout the results and the candidates trailing the polls discredit the results. Meanwhile, I am going to take a poll as well. My poll consists of one question:

Are the following two sentences I recently received from one of our more spirited guests, via email, a compliment or not? The sentences are:

I can always count on you to say “no” without actually saying “no.” As one of my favorite clients used to say “you have the gift of being able to tell someone to go to hell and make them look forward to the trip.”

Personally, I’m not sure. I think this can be interpreted anywhere from high praise to condemnation. So feel free to cast your vote, and to mention any all-time email favorites you have come across since email changed our world in the 1990’s. It’s not yet 10 a.m. today, and I have already deleted 94 emails from my in-box.

We go to Finland next week to take delivery of Allure of the Seas. Suddenly everything is happening either for Allure or in relation to the timing of Allure’s events. We saw the run through of Chicago: The Musical yesterday at our production studio in Hollywood, Florida. I told Lisa Bauer I wouldn’t write about it. I lied. It was awesome. Yes, Allure of the Seas is the Ship of Entertainment. Sorry, Lisa.

BY:Adam|22nd October, 2010 50 Comments

Preparing for Allure’s Arrival

It’s hard to believe, but in less than two weeks we will be in Turku to accept delivery of Allure of the Seas. There are other subjects I would like to blog about, but it’s clear what the readers want to know - everything possible about Allure of the Seas.

To illustrate the point, I will talk about something else. We recently posted an aerial photo of Oasis of the Seas docked across a thin pier in Mexico from Freedom of the Seas. We posted it because we recognized it would make for an interesting juxtaposition of the current largest cruise ship with the previous largest cruise ship. We totally underestimated the intensity of interest in the photo and the excitement it would generate, especially from people who knew the Freedom-class well and were already booked for an upcoming Oasis-class cruise. The point is that the passion people have for our newest ships continues to take us aback even though we designed the ships to incite such passion. The reality is more compelling than the theory.

Unfortunately - there are no major disclosures regarding Allure today except to say we are not done yet. We have every intention of creating more news before, during and after Allure’s introduction; just not today in this blog.

In preparation for the arrival of the ship, I’ve been in New York visiting media and meeting with our marketing and PR agencies. The difference between doing Allure-related media interviews now and doing Oasis-related media visits last year is remarkable. Last year, despite great anticipation about the arrival of Oasis, there was a strong undercurrent of skepticism about our ability to fill the ship in such distressing economic times and our ability to operate the ship with so many guests. Today, the skepticism is gone and the focus is on what is different about Allure (what we’ve admitted to so far: DreamWorks elements, Chicago: The Musical, 3-D movies, Samba Grill, Boardwalk Dog House, Rita’s Cantina, Britto art store and the Guess store). It’s a testimony to the incredible work put in by so many people since 2004 that the Oasis-class concept is accepted as an obvious success.

One post-script about the PR effort: it doesn’t just happen. It is the result of a never-ending quest by our own personnel and our agency (Weber- Shandwick) to brainstorm media-worthy ideas, attract media interest, and execute even the most arduous concepts. After the abundance of publicity that Oasis of the Seas received last year, our PR team faced a daunting task to generate even a meaningful echo of such notoriety with Allure of the Seas. They have done a great job so far with highlights (I can talk about) so far including the Taylor Swift concert on Allure in Cozumel in mid-January and the filming of Adam Sandler’s next feature movie titled “Jack and Jill,” starring Katie Holmes and Al Pacino, during the inaugural cruises in November. Stay tuned. Do you think you have a PR idea our team should be pursuing? Let us know.

BY:Adam|19th October, 2010 12 Comments

Oasis Anchored in Excellence Visit

Last week marked our first Anchored in Excellence (AIE) visit to Oasis of the Seas. I still can’t believe she has been sailing almost a year! It was great to see so many of the officers and crew that were part of the start up team. There is something very special about being part of the first crew and the level of excitement and pride they exude everywhere.

It was great to see Brian and Natalie back onboard. We are in the process of installing the third cast of Hairspray, and Brian (Edna), and Natalie (Tracy), were part of the first cast and will be back after a well deserved break for the third cast of Hairspray. It was also fun watching Hairspray with them and they were so anxious to get to be back performing.

We had the opportunity to sample the new menu on 150 Central Park that chef Molly Brandt created. Molly will be the Chef of 150 on Allure of the Seas, but she got the opportunity to experience the operation on Oasis of the Seas and experience shipboard life and while she was there she created a new menu for Oasis.

Our guests have been enjoying the ship, and I heard a great story that happened last week. Two of our guests got engaged on the Carousel. The bride collects Carousels and absolutely loves them. Her fiancé booked the cruise on Oasis specifically so he could propose on the Carousel and it was a huge surprise for her. I’d love to hear from our guests on any other special proposals or celebrations on our very unique features on Oasis of the Seas!

A big topic of discussion onboard was the fact that over 400 of the crew from Oasis are leaving next week and heading to Turku for the Allure delivery. I will be joining them, and I look forward to sharing our crossing experiences and stories with everyone as we work our way from Turku to Port Everglades. Captain Zini has assured me it will be a smooth sailing - but I’ve heard that before. :)

BY:Lisa Bauer|15th October, 2010 2 Comments

Boogie to the Beats of Saturday Night Fever!

By Lisa Bauer

The music is some of the most recognizable in the world. The movie single- handedly launched the world wide disco phenomenon. It was the idea that Saturday Night Fever has such global appeal that inspired us to add this amazing show to the entertainment line up on Liberty of the Seas in April of 2011 as she transitions to her first European season. Most importantly, it was our guests that selected this show when we did a survey searching for show options for Liberty of the Seas. I, of course wasn’t surprised this show was selected, especially watching the reaction that our 70’s night party had onboard with everyone singing and dancing in the Royal Promenade, and it is a standing (OK dancing) room only! This show also appeals to all ages, as one of my fondest memories is twirling with my 11 year old nephew Kyle after he asked me to dance to “Night Fever.”

We know that entertainment is one of the most important elements to our guests, and since we’ve introduced Hairspray and soon to premier Chicago: The Musical, it is clear that this level of Broadway and West End productions have truly elevated our entertainment line up. Of course, it also means that we can’t even take a breather after Allure of the Seas . My entertainment team, fresh off delivering a plethora of parades, ice, water, and production shows on Allure of the Seas, will not have any rest – but rather will head to New York next week to begin the auditions for Saturday Night Fever. We will begin a search for 24 talented cast members that will bring this show to life. I have no doubt that the theatre on Liberty of the Seas will have our guests out of their seats and singing and dancing to the Bee Gees’ mega hits during these shows!

Liberty of the Seas certainly has a special place in my heart – her initials are LB, as are mine. She arrived in the US during the inaugurals on my birthday back in 2007, so I am thrilled that during her dry dock in January, we will be adding a number of exciting features that our guests truly embraced on Oasis of the Seas . Everything from Cupcake Cupboard to a nursery, our award winning digital signage, outdoor movie screens, our DreamWorks line up, and 3D movie capabilities will all be new features.

Get your dancing shoes on and get ready to join us on Liberty!

BY:Lisa Bauer|12th October, 2010 23 Comments

Countdown to Allure: One More Month

Allure of the Seas’ delivery is a month away. For many on our team, the preparations are getting more intense. For me, they’re getting more enjoyable. Here are two recent examples:

September 17th was a proud day for our Entertainment team. They summoned us to Nova Southeastern University for the run through of Blue Planet, the phenomenal show that will share the main theater on Allure of the Seas with Chicago the Musical. Even without the costumes or sets it was dazzling to take in the singing, dancing, flying, trampoline jumping, and everything else that is in the show. I’ve said in my comments to the audience that we used to wonder if we could ever be as good as Broadway. Now I think the question may be, can Broadway do the things we do? A Broadway musical doesn’t have to share the same stage with another show so that all the sets have to disappear and not get in the way of each other. Not to mention that the talent doesn’t have to perform at an extremely high level in multiple productions simultaneously. And the extra cost to the guest: zero.

As an aside, the Entertainment team had some of the DreamWorks characters at the run through. I think the head of the lion’s costume from Madagascar must be at least one gross registered ton.

Moving to the culinary world at the risk of the readers thinking all we do is sample our cruise fare every day (that is, when we’re not watching shows), we recently had lunch in the test kitchen to try the menu from 150 Central Park on Allure of the Seas. You may remember that Molly Brandt recently won a contest that we co-sponsored with the Culinary Institute of America to be the inaugural chef in our top of the line specialty restaurant that has been such a hit on Oasis of the Seas. Well, now we know why Molly won - she’s an amazing chef. I won’t spill the beans on the menu items but I will say that the concept, the presentation, and the taste will be a real treat for our guests. Plus, Molly is a pleasure to be around and we hope many of our readers get a chance to meet her and have the 150 Central Park experience.

BY:Adam|8th October, 2010 22 Comments

Discussing Haiti with President Clinton

We don’t normally allow anything to interfere with our board meeting. But the 1st day of our meeting in New York took place on the same day President Clinton asked me to participate on a Haiti panel during the Clinton Global Initiative annual conference across town. The timing worked out for me to squeeze in the panel which you can watch by clicking on the following link: http://www.livestream.com/cgi_plenary/video?clipId=pla_48410238-f7f0-406b-9339-c85e3b4364eb .

I would like to express my appreciation for the consistent support President Clinton has demonstrated towards Royal Caribbean and to me personally for our involvement in Haiti, both before and after the earthquake.

Maryse Kedar, President of our Haitian subsidiary, was also on the panel on behalf of NGOs active in Haiti. She is one of the most remarkable people I have known in my career, a real treasure for us and for her country.

One way or another, Haiti must find funding to activate the Citadelle master site plan, but it isn’t happening. Thank goodness the school we are building at Labadee is on our property and with our money so nothing can get in its way. It will open next month but the Citadelle situation is frustrating.

Moving backwards in time, the week before the board meeting I was in Washington DC for visits with a variety of people inside the beltway. With the election looming, most of the talk was about whether the Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives. I will not prognosticate about that, but I will offer two observations about Washington based upon visiting several times each year on top of the fact that my concentration in the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton was in Government of a Democracy:

- First, from the perspective of someone who works 1,000 miles away, it’s comical to observe how obsessed people inside the beltway are with life inside the beltway. Some of them must believe that life goes on because of them, while most of the rest of us believe that life goes on in spite of them.

- Second, the trend towards partisanship, especially in Congress, is not just a function of people having stronger opinions these days. A fraying of the social fibers that used to hold the political community together regardless of party affiliation exacerbates it. Elected officials feel much more pressure to be in their home districts these days, and often confine their time on Capitol Hill to the minimum hours possible. Their families used to move to Washington when they were elected but now the families remain in the home districts and some Congressmen live in their offices during the week. I can see the Congressmen from South Florida just by taking the early Tuesday flight from Miami to Washington or the Thursday afternoon flight back. The result is that elected officials of the rival parties literally don’t know each other. A close personal friend who is a Congressman says the people who work out together in the House gym in the morning never attack each other personally because they know each other as (sweating) people.

BY:Adam|5th October, 2010 No Comments
 

Community picks