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

Oasis of the Seas’ Guest Surveys are In!

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.

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BY:Adam|17th December, 2009 9 Comments

My Experience on Oasis of the Seas’ Inaugural Sailing

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.

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BY:Adam|8th December, 2009 10 Comments

Oasis of the Seas in “Normal” Operation; and My Induction to the U.S. Travel Association Hall of Leaders

Oasis of the Seas is on her maiden voyage after having returned from a very successful four night cruise featuring Oasis’ first port of call at Labadee on Thursday. With the new dock, new facilities and new attractions, Labadee is a state-of-the-art, world-class port of call for any size ship. You should pick a cruise that goes there in the near future. Congratulations to our Private Destinations leadership team that oversaw a brilliantly successful project in a challenging environment on time and on budget: Associate VP John Weis and Site Managers David Scott and David Southby and their people, under the direction of SVP Craig Milan.

Now that Oasis is in “normal” operation, we are sifting through mountains of data and feedback about how it is going. Operations, new initiatives, new technologies, onboard revenue centers, etc., are all under the microscope of read and react. Overall things are going very well and I am expecting solid ratings for the first cruise as compared to first cruises of previous first of class ships. Nevertheless, the first cruise was a one time, four night cruise and now we need to deliver a seven night cruise to our guests inclusive of our three regular ports of call.

Surprise! The rest of the business never stopped while we were introducing Oasis. We are immersed in details of the 2010 Plan, final preparations for our (northern) winter programs and beginning the countdown to the early 2010 “wave” booking season. With the influx of congratulatory of emails on the Oasis inaugurals, my email in-box has attained a new level of fertility.

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BY:Adam|7th December, 2009 3 Comments

Oasis of the Seas’ Inaugural Period: One Historic Day After Another

Monday was a very special day for all of us at Royal Caribbean. Not just Royal Caribbean International but all of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. I would like to express my appreciation publicly for the incredible effort that thousands of our people devoted to making Oasis of the Seas the amazing ship it is and the inaugural period the smashing success it has been.

The buzz onboard throughout the naming day, ceremony and evening was probably beyond anything I have experienced in my 21+ years with the company. Everyone including our seven fabulous godmothers just seemed so pleased to be a part of the day. The view from the speaker’s podium that Richard and I shared during the ceremony, looking forward from the back of the Aquatheater pool area, was incredible. People were watching the festivities from every deck and every angle. When the fireworks went off after the bottle broke, we could not see them from our vantage point but the noise they made was overwhelming. And many people commented on the full or nearly full moon that presided over the event.

Overall the 18 nights were more successful than we had hoped, and we had had high hopes. As I mentioned previously, people constantly struggled for words to express what they wanted to say about the ship. That continued until Tuesday morning.

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BY:Adam|4th December, 2009 4 Comments
 

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