Since the start of the year, Carnival Cruise Line has made a significant number of announcements that illustrate the organisation’s huge commitment to staying ahead of the curve. “Everything we do is about creating fun and unique onboard experiences for our customers,” says Terry Thornton, the company’s senior VP of itinerary development and port operations. “Keeping things fresh and exciting is a real imperative of ours.”
In March, for example, the cruise line launched Carnival Journeys – a collection of 9 to 15-day seagoing adventures which feature ports throughout the Caribbean, Central America, Hawaii and Mexico, along with unique shipboard experiences which are tailored to each itinerary.
“It’s a very exciting new programme for us,” Thornton says. “We’re operating from a lot of US home ports and visiting a large number of ports that Carnival doesn’t normally visit. By visiting new destinations and offering longer cruise durations, we have the opportunity to have extra sea days and provide a number of onboard experiences that are a bit different to what we’ve done in the past.”
These onboard experiences include bringing in local cuisine from the different regions visited. “We’ll bring in a local chefs who will be able to interact with guests and, in some cases, even take them to the local markets to choose the food that will be served later that day,” Thornton says.
“We’re also keen to provide a lot more interaction with crew – this is something that we’ve found that guests really enjoy,” Thornton continues. “We will also include other unique features including a ‘throwback day’ which will bring back some of the things we used to do a long time ago. This will include a crew talent show, a complete midnight buffet, baked Alaska in the dining room, the Carnival Capers shipboard newsletter and much more.”
The company is also adding more calls in the Caribbean – a destination which Thornton says is immensely popular with guests. “It’s a natural deployment area and has huge appeal to guests who are interested in beautiful beaches, excursions, a diversity of culture, along with the opportunity to visit a multitude of ports,” he says.
Carnival is very much focused on meeting the needs of customers across North America, and therefore goes to great efforts to place ships in homeports near to huge populations. “We want to make it as easy as possible for guests to get to ports affordably and more conveniently,” Thornton explains. “In North America, 50% of the population lives within a five-hour drive of one of our homeports. This is a big part of our strategy.”
It’s this strategic thinking that Thornton believes has led the company to compete not only with other cruise lines, but with resort vacations too. “It’s surprising, but our biggest competition is land-based resorts,” he says. “Orlando, for example, had 62 million visitors last year. The entire cruise industry generated 14 million passengers from North America in 2014. We’re doing our utmost to compete with that and offer new, innovative experiences that go above and beyond expectations.”