Carnival Cruise Lines may have a new ship on the way in the shape of Carnival Vista, but the company is determined to make almost its entire fleet feel new with the ongoing rollout of its US$500 million Fun Ship 2.0 refurbishment programme. Carnival Freedom recently emerged from a significant revitalisation and makeovers will take place on Carnival Pride in the autumn and in early 2015 on Carnival Miracle.
“The Fun Ship 2.0 features have been very well received,” says Cahill. “When we started with it, we knew we wanted it to be about fun, memorable vacations at great value. Fun can mean different things to different people, so we said we’d try to create spaces that have their own personality to create a different kind of experience for different types of guests.
“Overall it has been more successful than we even hoped in that the guest ratings for ships with Fun Ship 2.0 features are higher than for our other ships. The challenge when you try something new is to do something that resonates with people who haven’t cruised before and does not alienate existing guests. When ships come in for a two-week drydock now, we try to add as many Fun Ship 2.0 features as we can.”
For Gerry Cahill, the changes introduced on Carnival Freedom (new dining, bar and entertainment options along with family-friendly facilities like Dr. Seuss Bookville and Camp Ocean) have set a new benchmark in several respects. “Carnival Freedom represents what we think we can do in a two-week drydock,” he says. “It is very complicated and expensive to take ships out of service in this way and the amount the team has been able to accomplish is pretty impressive. It blows my mind how much they have been able to get done, including retrofitting different deck spaces, as well as the RedFrog Pub and a number of interior spaces.”
An important recurring theme in the refits is the introduction of new children’s amenities such as Seuss at Sea and Camp Ocean. Cahill remarks: “Carnival carries the most children in the cruise industry – more than 700,000 kids a year. We made a decision that although we already had a really good kids’ programme and our guest ratings were very good, we wanted to elevate the family programme to a new level. It’s so important to us as we attract more first-time cruisers than anybody and a lot of them are young families.”
Seuss at Sea will be introduced on several ships over the coming months to bring the popular author’s zany creations to life onboard. “As a parent it’s hard not to fall in love with Dr. Seuss. It’s an iconic brand and there is always a moral with every story. It’s a great brand for us to be aligned with – fun, a little quirky, but the entire family can enjoy it. On Carnival Freedom, we have constructed a reading room where families can gather called Dr. Seuss Bookville. Some of our other ships will have pop-up reading rooms as we roll out the programme across the fleet.”
The focus on family time inherent in the Seuss at Sea concept reflects the trend towards parents seeking to share their children’s onboard experiences, he says. “With our children’s programmes we find that parents want to be involved; they don’t want to just leave their kids in the club. Seuss at Sea and our Camp Ocean programme help parents interact with their children.”
Camp Ocean came about thanks to Carnival’s research with families to find out what they most want to do onboard, explains Cahill. “The thing that resonated most was ocean themes and learning about the ocean, so we have gone back and changed the agendas of different activities they do. We have three different age groups at sea: Penguins, Stingrays and Sharks, with new ocean-themed activities for kids.” He says that initial guest ratings have been very high on Carnival Freedom, where it was first introduced.
Of course, the fleetwide refits are not just about making ships fun to travel on: like other brands in the global Carnival fleet, Carnival Cruise Lines has committed to a scrubber installation programme to reduce noxious emissions in preparation for drastically reduced sulphur limits in the Emission Control Areas (ECAs) from January 2015.
“We have a lot to do in the next few years now,” says Cahill. “The second leg of the (US) ECA in January allows us time to test and implement these scrubbers as we plan to put them on 21 of our 24 ships. The end result will be even cleaner than if we had used the higher-cost fuel. It’s the right thing to do.” By end of this year, five ships will be fitted with scrubbers, with another five to follow suit in 2015 and six the following year.
“On most of the ships, the work is being done in 14-day drydocks, and some in short wetdocks,” he says. “If you go onboard and climb into the engine room to see what they are doing, it is pretty complex but it is important work. We have an agreement with the US Environmental Protection Agency and we are going to meet that.”
So much for the challenges involved in retrofitting the fleet. It’s safe to assume that the line’s newbuild, Carnival Vista, will enter service with many hard-won technological innovations already in place. Details of progress on the build are being closely guarded for now and in keeping with industry trends, the company is content to feed enticing morsels of information to the media at intervals without tipping its hand too early on regarding the details of the new ship. “Carnival Vista will include things that Carnival Breeze, Carnival Sunshine and Carnival Freedom do not have,” says Cahill. “It will be another step up – we are always trying to create new experiences. It’s a pretty cool ship and we are very excited about it.”
Of course, Carnival Vista will bring not insignificant added capacity for Carnival to fill. There has been a lot of discussion in the industry recently around the need to build more consumer demand for cruises with the aim of boosting ticket prices. Cahill is quick to point out that the market dynamics in this situation are different than they were 15 or 20 years ago. “Back then, ‘build it and they will come’ was true. Today, you have to grow the market because if you just ‘build it’, the market may not react too well. In the last few years, we in the industry did that and it forced down prices.”
He notes: “It’s very important that we do things that attract people who have never cruised before and Fun Ship 2.0 exists for this purpose. It is important to appeal to younger cruisers but not alienate existing guests. I don’t believe we’ve done a particularly good job of this as an industry – and if we are not relevant to younger people, it can certainly impact our business going forward.” He cites shoreside events, short cruises and investment in TV and video online as crucial elements in reaching out to younger target groups. “Nothing relays what a cruise is really like the way a video does. It helps to paint a picture of why you would want to go on a cruise.”
Playing to the youth (and young at heart) market, onboard entertainment got a shot in the arm this year as the Carnival Live concert series kicked off in April with a range of 49 shows featuring stars such as Jennifer Hudson, Chicago and Lady Antebellum. “We’ve had 20,000 tickets sold and guest scores from those ships are very high,” says Cahill. “We are still experimenting with the mix: getting the right bands for the right source markets.”
He adds: “One of the things Carnival is known for is its live music but there are two pieces to our onboard entertainment. One gets the press, the other doesn’t.” The latter piece is the ubiquitous shipboard house entertainment that all cruise lines employ. “We have been reviewing our house bands onboard the ships and I’ve seen some of the new bands performing. We select the individual musicians and put the bands together. That is going very well but it is not getting media attention, although in some respects it is more important because that is what most of our guests see, since the house bands are on every ship.”
Making it easier for the ‘new to cruise’ family demographic to get onboard is another ongoing priority for Cahill. To this end, Carnival has announced some US-focused itinerary changes for 2015, with substantial capacity increases in Galveston and Long Beach. “If you look at Texas and California, they have one thing in common: both have large populations in driving distance of the cruise ports that can afford to go on a cruise,” says Cahill. “If you cut out the air travel, it makes it so much more affordable for a family of four or five to go on a cruise; that’s what makes these markets so attractive. Texas has a very young population and a lot of families. We are a family product and our ships have a lot of features that appeal to guests from Texas.”
The west coast is special to him for different reasons but still with the needs of families at heart. “A few years ago, there were a lot more cruise ships calling here than today. Cruise lines fled Mexico but we stayed. Although most of the criminal activity in Mexico is outside of the main tourist areas, overall the Mexican government has done a good job of reducing gang-related crime so people are looking at it again as a vacation option. It is important that people regard our destinations as safe and I think people are coming back to the view that Mexico is a great cruising destination.”
This article appeared in the Autumn/Winter 2014 edition of International Cruise & Ferry Review. To read the full article, you can subscribe to the magazine in printed or digital formats.