Top cruise execs address attendees at CruiseWorld conference

FORT LAUDERDALE — The top spot at Carnival Cruise Lines will be vacant after Gerry Cahill retires at the end of this month, and Carnival Corp. CEO Arnold Donald told the audience at CruiseWorld here that one of the traits he was looking for in a replacement was someone who “resonates” with Carnival.

During a question-and-answer session with Travel Weekly Editor in Chief Arnie Weissmann, Donald said that Carnival Cruise Lines has a particular identity and appeals most to people who enjoy socializing.

“The ideal candidate is someone who resonates with the brand,” Donald said.

A key challenge for the cruise industry, he said, is to “not chase some common denominator.” If each cruise line understands its segment and works it well, he said, success should follow.

Donald spoke during the kickoff general session of Travel Weekly’s annual CruiseWorld conference, three days of keynotes and QAs with the cruise industry’s top executives, panel discussions, educational sessions and ship inspections, all of which attracted about 1,000 exhibitors and attendees to the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. President Adam Goldstein took the stage on the second day of the show. A keynote address and QA with Norwegian Cruise Line Holding’s chief executive, Kevin Sheehan, was scheduled for Friday, after press time.

Donald also said “there’s a lot of positive momentum going” at the cruise line now, and that the new chief executive would be hired to “build on a great foundation” and not to “change or redirect things.”

During his opening keynote, Donald reminded the audience that the last time he had addressed the CruiseWorld audience, last November, he was a “cruise executive rookie.” At that time, he said, the company had just sailed some “pretty rough seas.”

“So you can imagine how pleased I am to be here today to be able to share news with you about how that’s changed and, I feel strongly, changed for the better,” he said.

Donald also said in his address that Carnival was working hard to raise prices so that it could reap profit from the value in a cruise and agents could be rewarded with higher commissions.

“Trust me, I’m well aware that earning commissions on cruises priced at $259 is not a get-rich-quick plan,” he said.

On Nov. 6, Goldstein spoke about the commonalities shared by successful travel agents and the newest Royal Caribbean ship, the Quantum of the Seas, which arrives stateside this week in Bayonne, N.J.’s Port Liberty. He listed a creative vision, opportunism, making an impression on your customer and collaborative partnerships as some of the key similarities.

In his QA session with Weissmann, Goldstein said it would be several years before the Sea Pass wristbands being used for room keys on the Quantum of the Seas can be rolled out fleetwide. He said the wristbands were simple, but they went hand-in-hand with a new shipboard property-management system that takes a fair amount of time to install.

“The next-generation embarkation and the RFID bands will kind of follow that process,” he said.

In response to a question about how the line’s older tonnage fares next to new ships, Goldstein said that older ships such as the Majesty of the Seas, which look their age next to the Quantum, have been given extended life by adding newer features in scheduled drydocks.

“We’ve found across the board — and this is industrywide — that we’ve been able to inject a lot more features from the newer ships onto the older ships than probably any of us thought possible,” he said.

Goldstein said pressure on concessionaires to be more efficient had resulted in smaller footprints for areas like the photo gallery on the Quantum, which in turn had freed up space for a variety of extra features that made the ship more exciting overall.

Saying he had never been a big fan of the contemporary/premium/upper premium/luxury continuum that many in the industry use to label the market segments, Goldstein asserted that the edges of those categories were increasingly blurring.

“If you’re in a loft suite on Oasis of the Seas, you’re in a pretty luxurious product,” he said. “Very often our bigger brands are the second choice for couples that are normally cruising on small luxury ships.”

He said such passengers want the attributes of a large ship with all of the luxury amenities of a small one, adding, “It is an interesting marketing challenge.”

Other events at CruiseWorld included a discussion with representatives from agency groups and a “superstar” agent member, all of whom talked about the benefits of their organizations. Another panel featured the sales and marketing executives from Starwood, Royal Caribbean, MSC Cruises, Princess, Carnival, Celebrity and Norwegian.

In addition, a hosted-buyer program took place during the trade show on Nov. 6.

Ship inspections available to agents included a tour of the Regal Princess, whose star-studded naming ceremony, with the cast of “The Love Boat,” took place on the ship just adjacent to the convention center.

Rebecca Tobin contributed to this report.