According to Carnival Cruise Line CEO Arnold Donald, an increase in positive media impressions sparked customer engagement for the company during 2015.
“2015 was a great year for our company,” Donald said during the Dec. 18 fiscal fourth-quarter conference call, according to Seeking Alpha. “In fact, one of our strongest ever, all thanks to the dedication and enthusiasm of our 120,000 team members who delivered nearly 11 million joyful vacation experiences. And due to the vital support from our tens of thousands of travel agent partners around the globe. I am very proud of our team's many accomplishments this year, particularly the successful efforts to increase awareness and consideration for our great cruise vacations, including our multi-faceted campaigns, those around the Super Bowl that generated over 10 billion positive media impressions during the height of wave season.”
What’s more, Donald noted that positive media impressions are up threefold in just two years.
“This year, we made significant progress on multiple other efforts designed to further our journey toward consistent yield improvement by creating demand and excess of supply,” he explained. “Now we reinforced our leadership position in the burgeoning China cruise market with the successful introduction of our fourth ship in 2015. And we are well positioned in 2016 with two more year-round ships entering the market, one each for our Costa and Princess brands. In 2017, we will have both our Carnival Cruise Line and AIDA brand enter the market along with Princess Cruises’ Majestic Princess; the first ship built specifically for Chinese guests and designed to maximize Chinese consumer demand.”
In addition, Carnival Cruise Line signed a joint venture with CSSC and CIC to begin a new cruise brand in China.
“Eventually, we expect to bolster our growth in China for many years to come,” Donald said. “Entering the market with multiple brands allows us to grow our presence faster and achieve deeper penetration by serving more of the differentiated market segments that exist there. We also launched our 10th brand in the Carnival Corporation family, Fathom, addressing a whole new travel category. We are excited about the prospects of doing good while offering meaningful experiences to travelers, initially to the Dominican Republic. We are also excited about our planned sailings to Cuba, made possible by Fathom. To date, Fathom has helped generate over 20 billion media impressions and counting.”
The best way to increase demand is to continue to exceed guests’ expectations, Donald noted.
“We continue to bring the best specialty restaurants and celebrity chef-designed menus to sea,” he explained. “We have further elevated the guests’ dining experiences through our growing list of celebrity chefs, which now include the renowned Thomas Keller, as well as Australian chef, Curtis Stone and chocolatier, Norman Love, joining Marco Pierre Weight, Guy Fieri and David Burke, among others.”
Carnival Cruise Line’s entertainment offering continues to be further enhanced, including BB King’s Blues Club, Lincoln Center Stage, and composer Stephen Schwartz of Wicked, along with a host of other innovations. The diversity of great entertainers aboard our ships keeps getting better with headliners like folk legends Crosby, Stills & Nash, jazz star, Herbie Hancock; country singer, Trace Adkins; Diana Ross and even the Grinch through Carnival Cruise Lines Seuss at Sea program.
“We continue to share learning’s to improve onboard beverage revenues through bar-related experienced innovation, menu design, and all-inclusive beverage offerings,” Donald said. “The behavior of communicating, collaborating and coordinating has already resulted in improved beverage revenue across the fleet; yet it is still in its early stages.”