Trump: Arison Will Make Carnival Ships Available

President Donald J. Trump said that Carnival Corporation Chairman Micky Arison told him that Carnival's cruise ships will be available if the government should need them amid the coronavirus outbreak.

"I spoke with Micky Arison of Carnival Cruise Lines and he is going to make ships available," Trump said, in a White House press conference on Thursday. "So in addition to the big medical ships you have coming, if we should need ships with lots of rooms, they will be docked in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, different places."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is no stranger to chartering cruise ships for temporary housing, having done so following Hurricane Katrina, and hurricanes in 2017. Both times FEMA worked with Carnival. 

Cruise ships could supply temporary housing for a quarantine facility, or serve as housing for medical or government workers, or in some cases, have been suggested as sites for surge hospital capacity.

Ships also provide a secure environment. Authorities would know who is on the ship at any time and can restrict access and movements relatively easily, compared to a land-based site.

Carnival Corporation owns nine brands with approximately 105 ships across its fleet.

Carnival Corp. offers the use of ships as floating hospitals

Carnival Corp. has offered the use of its ships as temporary hospitals for non-coronavirus patients to free up space at land-based hospitals to treat patients with Covid-19. 

President Trump announced at a press conference on Thursday that he had spoken with Carnival Corp. chairman Micky Arison on Thursday morning. “He’s going to make ships available,” he said.  

The president has already ordered that two Navy hospital ships are deployed to areas hits hard by coronavirus. The USNS Comfort will head to New York Harbor and the USNS New York will be dispatched to a location on the West Coast. If needed, the Carnival ships could supplement those efforts. 

“In addition to the big medical ships that you have coming, if we should need ships with lots of rooms, they will be docked at New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco, different places, so I want to thank Micky Arison. That’s Carnival Cruise Line,” the President said. 

In a statement shortly afterwards, Carnival Corp. said that select ships from its many brands -- including Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises and P&O Cruises Australia -- would be made available to help with a possible shortage of land-based hospital beds. 

“As part of the offer, interested parties will be asked to cover only the essential costs of the ship’s operations while in port,” the company said. 

“If needed, cruise ships are capable of being quickly provisioned to serve as hospitals with up to 1,000 hospital rooms that can treat patients suffering from less critical, non-Covid-19 conditions,” Carnival Corp. said. 

Temporary cruise ship hospital rooms can be quickly converted to accommodate remote patient-monitoring devices over the ship’s high-speed WiFi network, the company said. The ships would be capable of providing cardiac, respiratory, oxygen saturation, and video monitoring capabilities. Rooms have bathrooms, private balconies and isolation capabilities if needed.

The company said the ships would be able to provide up to seven intensive care units in their onboard medical centres with central cardiac monitoring, ventilators and other medical devices.

Carnival said various decks could house multiple medical functions, the company said.

Carnival Cruise Line names final Vista-class ship

Carnival Cruise Line has officially named Carnival Panorama in Long Beach, California, where the 4,008-passenger ship will be based.

No cruise line has deployed a new ship on the US west coast for 25 years, Carnival Cruise Line president Christine Duffy told more than 2,000 guests at last night’s ceremony onboard.

Carnival Corporation chairman Micky Arison, Arnold Donald, the corporation’s chief executive; and Princess Cruises’ president Jan Swartz were just some of the leading industry figures in attendance for the naming of the line’s final Vista-class ship.

Chefs Guy Fieri, Emeril Lagasse and Rudi Sodamin were all given a rousing reception by the crowd on the ship’s lido deck.

Duffy said: “This is the first new ship that will homeport here year-round for 25 years. We are very happy to homeport [Carnival Panorama] here in Long Beach alongside Carnival Inspiration and Carnival Imagination.”

Carnival Panorama has several new features including cooking school Carnival Kitchen, trampoline park Sky Zone and military veterans venue Heroes Tribute Bar.

Duffy said Heroes Tribute Bar on deck five was the feature which had “the most meaning”.

“At Carnival Cruise Line, we look to the godmother to personify the Carnival mission,” added Duffy, who introduced Carnival Panorama’s godmother Vanna White.

TV host White, who has starred in US game show Wheel of Fortune for 37 years, officially named the ship by pressing a button which smashed a bottle against the ship’s hull.

She said: “This naming of a brand-new ship is a once in a lifetime opportunity and one that I will never forget.

“Thank you, Carnival Cruise Line, for allowing me to serve as the ship’s godmother. I just know that the ship will provide endless fun for families for years to come.”

Carnival Panorama is operating six, seven and eight-day Mexican Riviera cruises from Long Beach year-round.

Arison on Carnival Corp.'s post-Concordia changes

Arison on Carnival Corp.'s post-Concordia changes

There was some interesting back-and-forth last week in federal court between Carnival Corp. chairman Micky Arison and U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Seitz that started out predictably but veered into unexpected territory.

Arison had been summoned to a status conference in the ongoing probation proceedings that Carnival is involved in as a result of Princess Cruises pleading guilty to environmental crimes in 2016.

Seitz was there to hold Carnival's feet to the fire, in a bid to stop continuing violations of environmental laws that have put her in a position of having to harangue Carnival about the problems.

Then she took a less confrontational tack.

"What do you love about being in your business, Mr Arison?"

Arison, one of the few people in a room full of lawyers and consultants who have actually worked on a cruise ship, recounted his 50-year career at Carnival, which included 32 years as its CEO.

"I'm very proud of what we've accomplished," Arison said. "Obviously we wouldn't be here if we were perfect."

Seitz then expressed her admiration for how Carnival reformed some of its processes after the sinking of the Costa Concordia on Jan. 13, 2012.

"That was the worst day of my life," Arison admitted in a hoarse voice.

Arison told Seitz that the Concordia illustrates some of the unique dilemmas in the cruise business that is not always understood by those outside the industry. As an example, he said, Carnival Corp. trains its bridge officers to work as a team. But the Italian Coast Guard, which trains Carnival's Italian officer corps, had a different approach.

That meant that creating a uniform safety culture across Carnival's 10 brands was hard to achieve.

"The Italian rules at that time were archaic," Arison said. "The captain was the master. Other team members [on the bridge] could not question the captain." Arison said Carnival lobbied hard with the Italian government to change the rules, but only after the Concordia accident were the changes made.

Seitz also had praise for the Arison Maritime Center, which Carnival opened in 2016 in Almere, the Netherlands. There, the company trains 6,500 bridge and engineering officers annually, in state-of-the-art simulators. That also gives the company a roadmap for change, she said.

Arison said that his family -- and himself personally -- was proud of having created the training centre. "We never put our name on a building in Miami," he added, despite plenty of offers. "That was one building we were proud to put our name on."

Carnival and Arison's Pledge $2 Million for Hurricane Relief

Carnival Corporation today announced that the corporation's philanthropic arm, Carnival Foundation, and its nine global cruise line brands together with the Micky and Madeleine Arison Family Foundation have pledged to donate $2 million in funding and in-kind support for relief efforts in The Bahamas following Hurricane Dorian, according to a press release. 

Carnival Foundation and the company's nine cruise line brands are pledging a total of $1 million in monetary and in-kind donations in support of immediate relief and recovery efforts in The Bahamas.

Carnival Corporation Chairman Micky Arison and his wife Madeleine are matching the corporation's commitment with a $1 million donation from the Micky and Madeleine Arison Family Foundation.

"We are fully committed to supporting the critical relief and recovery efforts already underway for The Bahamas, and we are working closely with officials and affected communities to identify the needs for support and assistance," said Arnold Donald, CEO of Carnival Corporation. "Our company has always been closely tied to The Bahamas with a rich history spanning many years, so it's heartbreaking to see the impact of Hurricane Dorian, and our thoughts and prayers are with the people of The Bahamas. We have long admired the unyielding spirit of the Bahamian people and have no doubt they will overcome, rebuild and recover, and we look forward to supporting their efforts."

A portion of the combined pledge will immediately go to support efforts being managed by Direct Relief, an international humanitarian organization that provides critical medications and supplies during emergency situations. Direct Relief is currently assembling and delivering requested medical aid and additional emergency medical caches with first-aid supplies to the affected areas in The Bahamas.

In addition, Carnival Corporation and its brands are working together with local officials, community leaders and key relief and recovery organizations to identify the most timely and urgent relief needs and immediate allocations for additional funds and support.

Separately, the company today announced an effort to collect and deliver food and supplies donated in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties for the people of The Bahamas, through a partnership with Tropical Shipping and The Bahamas National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). The effort, funded by Carnival Corporation and Tropical Shipping, will work in partnership with NEMA to provide immediate assistance to the people of the Bahamas where it is most needed.

Holland America Line takes delivery of Nieuw Statendam ship

Holland America Line takes delivery of Nieuw Statendam ship

The new Holland America Line ship Nieuw Statendam has been delivered by Fincantieri Marghera shipyard in Venice.

The vessel is the 16th Holland America Line ship built by Fincantieri and is the line’s second Pinnacle-class ship after Koningsdam, delivered in 2016.

Italian shipbuilding company Fincantieri will also build the third vessel in the series, due to be delivered in 2021.

Micky Arison, Carnival Corporation’s chairman; Arnold Donald, the corporation’s president and chief executive; Stein Kruse, the chief executive of Holland America Group; and Orlando Ashford, president of Holland America Line, all attended yesterday’s ceremony.

According to the shipbuilding team, the 99,500-tonne vessel’s technology is aimed at ensuring energy efficiency and reducing the environmental impact.

Fincantieri is currently designing or building 53 other ships across all of its yards.

Carnival Corp chairman’s foundation pledges $5m towards global disaster relief

Carnival Corp chairman’s foundation pledges $5m towards global disaster relief

The family foundation of Carnival Corporation chairman Micky Arison and his wife Madeleine is donating $5 million towards global disaster relief efforts.

The money will go to help communities affected by Hurricane Florence in North and South Carolina, Super Typhoon Mangkhut in the Philippines and the recent earthquake and resulting tsunami in Indonesia.

The $5 million donation from the Micky and Madeleine Arison Family Foundation is going to Save the Children and humanitarian organisation Direct Relief to support urgent relief needs, as well as the long-term recovery strategy across the globe in the wake of recent natural disasters.

Additional grants are underway from Carnival Foundation, the cruise conglomerate’s philanthropic arm, and brands including Carnival Cruise Line, Holland
America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn, AIDA Cruises, Costa Cruises, Cunard, P&O Cruises Australia and P&O Cruises UK.

Carnival Corporation’s collective donations will go toward supporting global aid agency Mercy Corps in Indonesia, International Medical Corps in the Philippines, and Save the Children in North and South Carolina and the Philippines.

Carnival Foundation executive director Linda Coll said: “Our hearts go out to those who are dealing with great hardship and loss following these major natural disasters, and our sincere hope is that these additional resources will help our partner organizations execute response plans for both immediate relief needs and longer-term recovery efforts.

“The Micky and Madeleine Arison Family Foundation have helped so many people and communities over the years through its generous donations, and with this new pledge, it continues to provide critical support resources around the globe that will make a difference for those in need.”

She added: “We want to do all we can to help those with the most urgent needs, and also build a foundation for the future health and well-being of these affected communities for years to come.”

Carnival Accepts Delivery of Horizon

PHOTO: Rendering of Carnival Cruise Line's Carnival Horizon. (photo courtesy of Carnival Cruise Line)

Carnival Cruise Line’s new flagship, Carnival Horizon, was presented today at the Fincantieri’s shipyard in Monfalcone, Italy. Carnival Corporation Chairman Micky Arison, as well as Carnival Cruise Line President Christine Duffy, attended the ceremony.

A sister ship to the Carnival Vista, the 3,954-passenger Carnival Horizon features an IMAX Theatre, craft brewery and smokehouse, teppanyaki restaurant, ropes course and Dr. Seuss-themed water park.

And that’s not to mention the Havana staterooms and suites, which include exclusive daytime access to a Cuban-themed bar and pool.

Grammy award-winner and actress Queen Latifah will christen the ship in New York City on May 23. Thereafter, Carnival Horizon will operate Mediterranean sailings out of Barcelona. She’ll move to New York for a series of Bermuda and Caribbean cruises before beginning six-night Caribbean sailings from Miami in the fall.

Another Vista-class vessel, Carnival Panorama, debuts in 2019. She’ll operate year-round from Southern California.

Carnival Horizon Presented by Fincantieri

The Carnival Horizon was presented today at Fincantieri’s shipyard in Monfalcone to its ship owner, according to a press release. 

The ceremony was attended, among others, for the shipowner, by Micky Arison, Chairman of Carnival Corporation, and Christine Duffy, President of Carnival Cruise Line, while Fincantieri was represented by Giampiero Massolo, Chairman and Giuseppe Bono, CEO.

The Carnival Horizon was built at Fincantieri’s shipyard in Marghera and is a sister ship to the Carnival Vista. The ship is 133,500 tons and 323 meters long. 

Fincantieri has built 81 cruise ships since 1990, 64 of which were for Carnival’s different brands.

WATCH: Carnival's New Marketing Video Best of Recent Cruise Line Commercials

Photo courtesy of Carnival Cruise Line

Carnival Cruise Line released a new marketing video on its YouTube page today, breaking down what a vacation onboard its ships is all about, and it does so in a refreshingly down-to-earth way, particularly compared to the recent commercials released by competing cruise companies.

Carnival’s spot, embedded below, is relaxed, emphasizing its playful philosophy and history of delivering on its promise of “fun for all” and “all for fun.” It presents a welcome antidote to our lives that are often “too fast” and just “too much.” It even takes a note from the McDonald’s playbook, sharing that it has provided joy for 60 million guests and counting, but the commercial is anything but fast food-like in its approach.

In fact, the video is slow-paced and focused on friends and family. After all, Carnival was indeed started by Ted Arison and passed down to his son Micky Arison. They believe that all people, not just the well-off, have a right to fun, and to have as much of it while on earth, and the commercial perfectly says Carnival is exactly where they can find it.

Comparatively, Royal Caribbean International’s latest commercials are much shorter for television and cram as much in as possible. They speak to a millennial crowd, of which I am included, and they mostly succeed, even though the song in the one below is rather headache-inducing. This variety grabs your attention but sustains on a different level and definitely speaks less to relaxation.

Norwegian Cruise Line’s one below comes somewhere in between with a Pitbull soundtrack that leaves more room to breathe in between the beats. The lifestyle presented is certainly youth-friendly without forgetting older generations and both demographics’ need for some negative space in a vacation as well. The “Feel Free” tagline is a good fit for the brand and for a broad target audience.

Carnival Corporation expects revenue to rise by 2.5% in 2018

Carnival Corporation expects revenue to rise by 2.5% in 2018

Carnival Horizon being constructed and due next year.

Carnival Corporation has announced a $2.6billion net income for the full year of 2017.

Revenues for 2017 were $17.5billion – $1.1billion higher than the $16.4billion in 2016.

Carnival said in its annual report that it expects 2018 revenue yield to be up 2.5% compared to this year.

Bookings across the world’s largest travel company for 2018 have been running well ahead of the prior year at higher prices, Carnival said.

Carnival’s president and chief executive officer Arnold Donald said that despite booking disruptions from this year’s hurricanes, the company was heading into 2018 with a stronger base of business and higher prices than last year.

Donald said: “We have numerous efforts underway to keep the momentum going in 2018 and beyond, from our innovative approaches to increased consideration for cruising, to the further roll-out of our state-of-the-art revenue management system.

“In 2018 we also look forward to the delivery of four new cutting-edge ships, Carnival Horizon, Seabourn Ovation, AIDAnova, and Nieuw Statendam to further our strategic fleet enhancement program.”

Disruptions to voyages caused by hurricanes reduced fourth quarter earnings by approximately $0.11 per share.

Carnival Donates $2 Million to Harvey Victims

Nobody and Nothing Escapes Mother Nature

Carnival Cruise Line, Carnival Corporation and Carnival Chairman Micky Arison’s family foundation have joined forces to help Texas recover from the first Category 4 hurricane to hit the United States since 2004.

Carnival Cruise Line and its philanthropic arm, Carnival Corporation, are each donating $500,000, for a total of $1 million. Arison and his wife Madeleine are matching that with an additional $1 million donation from their foundation.

“Our hearts go out to all those who have been impacted by the devastation of Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath, and all of us throughout the Carnival Corporation family feel a responsibility to do our part in supporting relief and rebuilding efforts in a region that we call home and where so many of our guests and business partners live and work,” Christine Duffy, Carnival Cruise Line president, said in a statement.

“We are very committed to the Gulf Coast as a vibrant and special part of the North American cruise industry, and our commitment will remain as strong as ever during the region’s recovery process.”

To help drum up even more donations for those impacted by Hurricane Harvey, cruise guests sailing on some Carnival cruises will be given the option to make a donation when they check in for their cruise. The corporation’s brands and employees will be participating as well.

The cruise company said it is working with emergency response officials, community leaders and other key relief and recovery organizations to identify the most urgent needs and immediate allocations for the donation.

In particular, the cruise company wants the money to be used to support on-the-ground teams that are distributing emergency supplies as well as to support rebuilding efforts.

The money will help provide families with access to food, shelter, water, hygiene products, general necessities and medicines.

At least 12 people have died in the Texas flooding. One of them, Houston police Sgt. Steve Perez, drowned while trying to get to work, according to CNN.

Cunard and a compelling story of immigration

The Three Queen's in Liverpool.

Cunard Line has put together a new video of Micky Arison talking about how Carnival Corp. came to own the storied brand, and it's worth seeing if you can get the opportunity. Among other things, it sheds some light on the immigration issue that is prominent in the current political debate.

The video begins with Arison reminiscing about coming to the U.S. on Cunard's Mauretania. It was 1954. Arison's father, Ted, who founded Carnival, moved the family from Israel to New York where he thought there would be better business opportunities. Micky, who was 5, recalls going to school in New Jersey and being driven along the West Side Highway past the trans-Atlantic liners at the pier.

Little did he imagine at the time, Arison said, that he would grow up to play an important role in the cruise industry.

Arison said he got the idea for a liner like the Queen Mary 2 after seeing the film "Titanic," with the nostalgic, romantic gloss it put on the ill-fated ship. The 1997 film was the first film to gross more than $1 billion.

In 1998, Carnival bought 68% of Cunard for $425 million, buying the rest later.

Arison said it is often misunderstood that Carnival conceived of the Queen Mary 2 after deciding to buy Cunard. The reality is (one of Arison's favorite phrases) that Carnival conceived of the ship first and only bought Cunard because It needed the historic brand to make the concept work.

Ted Arison came to the U.S. via Cunard when immigration was at a low ebb. It had been 30 years since the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924 had been passed "to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity," according to a State Department history. It would be another 10 before the law was liberalized by Congress after President Kennedy's death.

America was as homogeneous as it would ever be in 1954. Yet it still had room for Ted Arison, born in Tel Aviv when it was part of British Palestine. That's to America's credit.

Open immigration is a blunt instrument. Some immigrants may turn out to be criminals. Most are ordinary like the rest of us. But some, perhaps a disproportionate number, are extraordinary, like Ted Arison. Is there any doubt that the U.S. economy is better off with Carnival Corp. headquartered in Miami instead of Tel Aviv? 

Josh Leibowitz, senior vice president of Cunard North America, said the Arison video wasn't created with the idea it would be widely distributed. But if there's a Cunard sales event in your town, it will probably be shown. If you make time to see it you won't be sorry.

Carnival Corp. orders 9 ships to be built from 2019 to 2022

By Johanna Jainchill 
Carnival Corp. said Thursday that it would add nine ships to its fleet between 2019 and 2022.

Carnival offered almost no details about the ship order. It did not specify which of its nine brands would get the new vessels or offer any information about their size, design or cost.

In a statement, Carnival said the new ships were expected to serve the North American, European and Chinese cruise markets, would be specifically designed and developed for their particular brands and would be the most efficient ships in Carnival history.

“We’re excited to take this next step in our fleet-enhancement plan with these two new agreements that are consistent with our long-term strategy of measured capacity growth over time,” Carnival Corp. President and CEO Arnold Donald said in a statement.

The order is in line with Donald’s previous statements indicating that the company would restrict its growth to two to three ships per year across its fleet.

Carnival said it had signed memorandums of agreement with Italy’s Fincantieri shipyard to build five of the vessels and with Germany’s Meyer Werft to build four.

Additional information about the ships, such as their design and which brands they will be built for, will be revealed at a later date, Carnival said.

In announcing the new builds, the company indicated that Donald would be offering additional details about the new vessels during Carnival Corp.’s earnings call on Friday.

Carnival Corp. is the parent company of Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn, Aida Cruises, Costa Cruises, Cunard, P&O Cruises (Australia) and P&O Cruises (U.K.).

Late last year it ordered one ship each from Fincantieri for Carnival Cruise Line and Holland America Line for delivery in 2018.

The company has added more than 30 ships to its combined fleets since 2007, and it has another nine scheduled to be delivered between 2015 and 2018, which Donald pointed out in December was about one vessel for each of its brands over the next four years.

This year, Carnival is adding two ships to its global fleet and removing four. The new vessels are P&O’s Britannia, which launched earlier this month, and the Aida Prima, set to debut later this year.

All the sea's a stage

By Tom Stieghorst

When Micky Arison began working on cruise ships in the 1970s, name-brand entertainment was scarce.

"We had a limbo dancer, a hostess and a singer," the Carnival Corp. chairman recalled in a recent promotional video.

Four decades later, the limbo dancer has been replaced by far more recognizable talent. Olivia Newton-John, Chicago and LeAnn Rimes are among the names appearing on Carnival Cruise Lines ships this summer.

Each week, dozens of musicians, dancers, magicians, comics and other professional entertainers sail on each of Carnival Cruise Lines' 24 ships. The biggest cruise lines operate facilities on land to train performers for shows at sea.

Even some luxury lines are employing cutting-edge video technology and aerialists of the type used in Las Vegas shows, striving to make their vessels as alluring as possible.

"Things have changed quite a bit," Arison said.

Cruise entertainment is being reshaped by a combination of technology, changing consumer tastes, competition, growing ship size and a revolution in the way dining works on ships. (To see more examples of what cruise lines are doing in the entertainment department, click here or on any of the photos for a slideshow of images.)

Those improvements have enabled cruise lines to experiment with moving some entertainment from the cost side of their ledgers to the revenue side, with several on the cusp of charging guests for what was once free.

"For the first time, we're seeing entertainment as driving revenue to the vessels," said Nick Weir, vice president of entertainment for Royal Caribbean International.

Carnival started charging between $20 to $40 this year for seats at its Carnival Live concerts, and Weir hinted that Royal is exploring ways to follow suit on its ships.

Entertainment has changed in part because of the more flexible dining that has evolved on cruise ships over the past 10 years. Andy Stuart, executive vice president of global sales at Norwegian Cruise Line, said a passenger's choice of shows used to be defined by early or late seating.

"It was dinner and a show," Stuart said, when evening meals were limited to the main dining room.

But Norwegian had to rethink entertainment after it ditched the two-shift dining format in favor of its Freestyle Dining.

Now one of the hottest tickets on Norwegian's newer ships is a theater that combines dinner and a show. The Illusionarium on the Norwegian Getaway and Cirque Dreams on the Norwegian Breakaway provide hour-long specialty shows with dinner for $29.99.

Burn the Floor, a 45-minute pop ballroom dance show, is also staged in the middle of one of Norwegian's main dining rooms.

In the main theater, Norwegian offers a licensed version of Broadway's "Legally Blonde," among other shows. It also pioneered the at-sea presentation of Blue Man Group, a Las Vegas mainstay.

"Everyone loves Blue Man Group," said Norwegian CEO Kevin Sheehan. "But it is a little bit different than the traditional cruises with the old-fashioned Broadway shows, where everybody's running around dancing and singing like they've been doing for 40 years on these ships."

Other lines have also retired the flesh-and-feathers shows of yesteryear.

Out with the old

At Holland America Line, one of the big entertainment hits has been Dancing With the Stars at Sea, a program of dance lessons and theme cruises modeled on an audience-driven TV show.

Shows like "Dancing With the Stars" and "American Idol" are changing audience expectations, said Lisa Lehr, executive director of entertainment development at New York-based RWS Associates, which produced six shows last year for Holland America.

"Your large-ensemble, everybody sings/ dances sort of showgirl-esque entertainment has seen its day," Lehr said. "We're definitely moving away from that."

In addition to shows that make audiences the judges, cruise lines are breaking down the walls between entertainers and the audience.

In a new main theater musical on Carnival, "88 Keys: The Rock N' Roll Piano Show," the piano-bar performer on the ship does a 30-minute warm-up, bringing his fans to the show.

Before another show, "Heart of Soul," the cruise director has winners of a romantic-dedications contest read their entries. Prizes are awarded and flowers are given ahead of the show.

Performers gradually take the stage at the start of the show from seats in the audience.

Carnival is one of many cruise lines to deploy new technologies in entertainment. One game changer has been the adoption of video walls; the large, mobile scenery panels, which use LED screens, have made stage backgrounds far more interesting and versatile.

"That opens a world of storytelling," Lehr said. "We're able to create the Princess Forest. We're able to take you to the Queen of Hearts tea party, and the Mad Hatter tea party, without having to bring on large set pieces that there's nowhere to store on a cruise ship."

On the Carnival Freedom, a performance of "Heart of Soul" starts with an LED-panel depiction of a wooden dock building itself, plank by plank, into a lake. Later in the show, the screens depict fireflies in a forest. Changing skylines seamlessly turn the Golden Gate Bridge into the Brooklyn Bridge. Vegetation grows, Jack-and-the-Beanstalk style, and the stars, moon and mountains form the backdrop for a rendition of "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)."

LED panels debuted on cruise ships several years ago and are now found on most major cruise lines, as well as in Las Vegas and on touring Broadway shows and at big rock concerts.

And now 3-D

The next big thing in scenery on ships will be the 3-D projection system developed for Royal Caribbean's Quantum of the Seas.

Weir said the Vistarama system of 18 projectors offers a higher-definition image than LED panels. The projectors will throw scenes on the three-story, 270-degree wrap-around windows in the ship's aft lounge as a background for performances in the evening.

On the Quantum's main stage, guests will hear a performance on a theater-sized harp and a wall of drums, as well as see a woman whose costume can be played like a violin.

At 167,800 gross tons, the Quantum is typical of a new generation of ships that can accommodate two or more dynamic performance venues. Bigger ships also mean more crew quarters, so performers don't have to staff the ship's library or kids club in their off hours.

"There was a time when every berth had to work an enormous amount for it to be valid," Weir said. "That's not the case when you've got a city the size of Oasis of the Seas."

Better performers are one result, he said.

With 104 shows being presented on Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises in any given week, the need to recruit and retain performers has increased. Royal has outgrown its training space in Hollywood, Fla., and is building a $20 million rehearsal theater at Florida International University.

The 130,000-square-foot theater is about half built, Weir said, adding that it's expected to open in January. Norwegian Cruise Line opened a 46,000-square-foot studio in Tampa in January. Carnival trains performers in Miami; Princess Cruises rehearses in Los Angeles.

RWS is also hoping to attract more cruise ship work by building a 31,000-square-foot space in Long Island City in New York City. It wants to capitalize on its background and experience producing corporate events, theme park shows and mall entertainment as well as its connections to talent.

"The beauty of us being in New York City is we're really on the pulse of what's new and exciting happening in entertainment today," Lehr said. "We're really able to hand-pick those creative minds and creative talents to bring cutting-edge and innovative programming."

Although main-stage musicals have always been the foundation of cruise entertainment, today's bigger ships allow for a greater number of small acts in more parts of the ship.

Royal Caribbean, for example, has retooled the atriums on some of its ships as evening performance spaces for aerialists.

At Carnival, the trend is shorter shows with smaller casts, complemented by more musical groups in the atrium, casino, bars and lounges, as well as comedy at the line's Punchliner Club.

Jim Berra, chief marketing officer at Carnival, said guests expressed frustration when they couldn't see both the main stage show and a Punchliner show in one evening.

"They don't want to have to trade off," he said. "So what we're trying to do is distribute more entertainment throughout the ship."

Skip Lyons, cruise director on the Carnival Freedom, said that when he started working on Carnival ships 18 years ago, there was a 10-piece pit band for production shows.

Today only three ships retain the 10-piece band. The other 21 use recorded music in the main theater.

"The band might not be in the show, but while the show is on, we can be entertaining guests elsewhere on the ship because the band is now playing around the ship," Lyons said.

In the 1990s, he recalled, Carnival ships had two production shows during a seven-week cruise that employed a cast of 16 made up of two singers, two acrobatic adage performers and 12 dancers.

Today, on most ships, Carnival does four shows a week with a cast of eight -- four dancers who also sing and four singers who also dance, Lyons said. Show lengths are typically 35 to 40 minutes, down from an hour or more in the past.

Earlier this year, Carnival upgraded its house band as part of the new Carnival Live program, which brings well-known acts onboard for in-port shows in Nassau, Cancun and California's Catalina Island.

The shows are typically staged on weekdays when celebrity performers such as Jennifer Hudson or Trace Adkins are often idle.

Carnival's Berra said the concept has been a success, with many shows sold out.

"It's a great opportunity for [the cruise lines] to increase their earnings," he said.

The initial series of 49 concerts concludes Dec. 15 in Nassau with a show by rock band REO Speedwagon. Berra said details of a second season will be announced this fall.

Thinking bigger in smaller venues

Smaller ships pose a challenge because they don't have as many venues for entertainment. But ships on the larger end of the luxury scale are mounting shows that mimic their bigger brethren.

At Crystal Cruises, the 1,070-passenger Crystal Serenity is home to iLuminate, in which performers are costumed in wired suits that show only the outlines of lights in a darkened theater.

The concept, pioneered on the TV show "America's Got Talent," creates some startling effects, such as a robot that appears to juggle several of its own heads. On Broadway, tickets start at $68.

Regent Seven Seas Cruises recently retooled the two-story theater on the Seven Seas Mariner to accommodate LED-panel walls and more aerial performers in a new, Cirque du Soleil-style production.

"In the finale of our shows we may have six of our 12 performers flying in the air at once," said Michael Day, vice president of entertainment at Regent and sister line Oceania Cruises. "That's something you don't see on many ships, even ships much, much larger than our ships."

Regent uses Jean Ann Ryan Productions for its shows, a veteran company that created cruise versions of Broadway shows when Norwegian first introduced that kind of entertainment in the 1980s.

While charging for marquee talent like performers in Carnival Live might be the wave of the future, for now it is an unusual revenue model. Most cruise entertainment remains free ­-- and a bargain, cruise executives say.

Sheehan pointed to Blue Man Group as an example.

"When you think about it, it's an $80 or $90 show in Vegas, and people can watch it for free as part of their cruise fare," he said.

Another example is the upcoming production of the musical "Mamma Mia" on Quantum; it will be the first full-length Broadway musical staged at sea, complete with an intermission.

Weir tells a story of seeing a three-generation family group of 15 in the front row of a production of "Saturday Night Fever" on the Liberty of the Seas. "I remember thinking, '15 people at a Broadway show -- that's a $3,000 night out, and yet at Royal it's on the house.'"

Whether free or paid, top entertainment helps keep cruises competitive with mass-market destinations like Las Vegas and Orlando. But Weir said the goal going forward is to set trends, not merely match them.

"We're on the map now," he said. "We're like an entertainment leader. No single entertainment operation under one roof is doing what we're doing: ice shows, aqua shows, Broadway shows, and now we're going to be doing multimedia shows. And we do it all in-house."

The bottom line, Weir said, is that "we've become valid, and we've become huge." 

Gaining perspective with a look back at RCCL, Carnival Corp.

By Tom Stieghorst

Looking back 10 years at the two biggest cruise companies is one way to gauge how far the industry has progressed and gain some perspective on the problems of the day.

In 2003, the problems included terrorism, war, flu and the SARS respiratory virus. “A perfect storm,” Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. Chairman Richard Fain called it in his annual letter to shareholders that year.

On the shipbuilding front, RCCL made its first new order in 3½ years, for an “Ultra Voyager” class ship that would evolve into the Freedom of the Seas. The letter mentioned short cruises from Los Angeles had been restored, and a brand-new terminal in New Jersey called Cape Liberty was inaugurated.

Celebrity Cruises had launched a marketing campaign with the theme of ordinary people being treated like celebrities, the Serenade and Mariner of the Seas were added to the fleet and RCCL’s joint venture with First Choice Holidays, Island Cruises, had just turned profitable.

RCCL was hoping to regain the investment ratings on its debt that it had lost after the 9/11 terror attacks.

Flash-forward to 2013. Terrorism, war, flu and SARS, while not vanquished, were not hot-button issues. In his letter to shareholders, Fain says RCCL ordered no new ships for 2017 to keep capacity growth modest.

Royal isn’t sailing from Los Angeles anymore, but its Cape Liberty terminal in New York Harbor is more important than ever. Royal built six ships after Serenade and Mariner, with a seventh, Quantum of the Seas, due in November.

RCCL’s stake in Island Cruises was sold to Germany’s TUI, which is a 50-50 partner with RCCL in TUI Cruises. And the company is still trying to earn back its investment grade rating.

For Carnival Corp., 2003 was the year it finalized its landmark merger with P&O Princess Cruises. It was preparing to take delivery of seven ships in a nine-month stretch, including Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2.

“I have never, in my 35 years in this business, been more excited and enthusiastic about the future of our company,” Carnival Corp. Chairman and CEO Micky Arison wrote.

Ten years later, the mood is less ebullient. Arison’s letter in the annual report is a bit retrospective; it notes his retirement as CEO of the company he has steered for three decades and salutes Carnival veterans Howard Frank and Pier Luigi Foschi, who also stepped down from executive roles in 2013, leaving the company’s day-to-day direction in the hands of a relative newcomer, Arnold Donald.

Arison’s letter says Donald brought “a fresh perspective and a new energy to our company. … His skills are ideally suited to lead the next stage of Carnival Corp. and PLC.”

Carnival Corp.’s Arison praises agents in new ‘open letter’ ad

By Tom Stieghorst

Carnival Corp. is making it personal.

In a new advertisement scheduled to appear this week in several publications, including Travel Weekly, Carnival Corp. Chairman Micky Arison spells out his appreciation for travel agents, citing their crucial role in making Carnival’s brands successful over the years.

The ad takes the form of an open letter and bears a photo of Arison and his signature at the bottom.
It is an unusually direct communication from Arison, who recently stepped down as CEO of Carnival Corp. while retaining the title of chairman. In the letter, Arison also introduces his chosen successor as CEO, Arnold Donald, as someone travel agents can trust.

“Together, we will continue to work hard to exceed guests’ expectations and to position Carnival brands as your customers’ cruise lines of choice,” Arison writes.

Roger Frizell, vice president for corporate communications at Carnival Corp., said of Arison, “This is something he wanted to do as a way to reach out to the travel agent community to personally thank them for their support over the years, while also using the opportunity to introduce Arnold as our new CEO.”

The letter carries the logos of all 10 Carnival Corp. brands, clearly differentiating it from initiatives announced recently by Carnival Cruise Lines under the Carnival Conversations banner.

“The fact that it comes from the chairman says a great deal,” said Stewart Chiron, a Miami-based travel agent and a regular commentator on broadcast and cable networks.

Chiron said the letter sends a message of stability, direction and continuity at the top during a period of corporate transition.

It also reflects Arison’s genuine sympathy for agents, he said, adding, “I know his support for travel agents has been unwavering over the years.”

Meanwhile, the Carnival Cruise Lines brand continues to roll out changes built on the feedback it received in Carnival Conversations.

The latest volley is the reinstatement of a printed brochure, which was announced by Mike Julius, Carnival Cruise Lines’ senior managing director of U.S. trade sales, at the end of September.

“Travel agents have told us loud and clear that they want a printed brochure,” Julius said when making the announcement. “We’re thrilled to introduce one that is customized with the information that matters most to them.”

Although the number of pages is still being decided, the brochure will be printed in an 8½-by-11-inch format and will contain enough content to be more like a catalog than a brochure.

It will include deck plans, which agents complain are hard to share with clients in an online format, and detailed itineraries by destination as well as cabin photos, a Frequently Asked Questions page and an At-a-Glance ship-deployment grid.

Travel agents can pre-order the free brochures beginning Nov. 15 through GoCCL.com. Carnival Cruise Lines said it expects to begin shipping them late in the year, in time for the start of Wave season on Jan. 1.

Top Carnival bosses reaffirm commitment to agents

By Lee Hayhurst 

Two Carnival bosses have reaffirmed their commitment to agents and rejected claims that moves to make distribution more efficient were an attempt to cut out the trade completely.

Speaking exclusively to Travel Weekly last week, Carnival Corporation chairman  and new chief executive Arnold Donald (pictured) said inefficiencies in the system in the UK and the US had to be addressed.

Changes made to agent terms, automation and commission in both countries have angered some agents and Carnival has already initiated a charm offensive on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the UK, potential earning levels 
have crept back up and an Agent Matters initiative has been started.

Arison said: “Our goal was never to cut agents out or to not work with them, but to make this system more efficient so we can all make more money.

“As an operator, if you get a booking on your website, it’s efficient, but that’s a very small piece of the business. If a customer goes to an agent who has an efficient system, that’s as efficient as them calling our call centre. The worst situation is when an agent calls us because then you have two ‘call centres’ talking to each other.

“We were trying to get to a situation where the customer calls our call centre or an agent. In the UK it was also an attempt to control our pricing.”

Donald said the agent community was one of the key stakeholders he has engaged with since taking the role from Arison on July 3. "Travel agents have always been valued," he said. 

"You are always trying to tweak what you are doing to motivate and incentivise the behaviour you want so you can effectively manage costs so the money you are spending has an impact.

"There were some measures taken that aggravated [agents] and did not have the desired results but there was never a feeling that travel agents did not count or were not important."   

Carnival UK chief executive David Dingle said the commission changes in the UK were driven by travel agents themselves. "There were a number of long-standing partners who kept saying to us can't you do something to stop us cutting each other's throats by this competitive rebating.

"It led to this massively inappropriate behaviour of customers shopping around and agents finding it impossible to close the sale. Some agents were cutting away so much they had nothing to sustain themselves and we lost control of pricing as a result."

The Venice 'squeeze' that wasn't

By Tom Stieghorst

Returning from Italy after a week on the Carnival Sunshine, a group of us were waiting in an airport lounge when suddenly what should pop up on the television monitors but the Carnival Sunshine.
It was some kind of news story. But none of us understood Italian, so it wasn’t until I got back to the U.S. that I caught up to the tale.

An Italian newspaper had reported that the Carnival Sunshine, on its way through the Giudecca Canal in Venice, had passed within 20 meters of the shoreline, squeezing a vaporetto water taxi in the process. 

The story was based on comments from a Venetian environmental minister who said witnesses reported the incident to him. He was quoted as wondering about the reason for this “sail by,” inferring both that there was some sort of salute to Carnival Corp. Chairman Micky Arison, whose yacht was docked nearby, and some similarity to the tragic circumstances of the Costa Concordia sinking, which was caused by an unapproved sail-by of the Italian island of Giglio.

It isn’t often one is in the position to know first-hand about a story halfway around the world. And yet in this case I was on the Carnival Sunshine as it arrived in Venice.

Moreover, I was watching from the starboard side, where the squeeze allegedly took place. I can say there was no deviation from a straight course, no audible warning from anyone on the water and no comment from any of the scores of passengers on deck that something was amiss.

Carnival said the ship passed no closer to shore than 70 meters at the point of dispute. The cruise line said the local harbor pilot and the Italian Coast Guard confirmed that, as did the ship’s voyage data recorder.

So why the uproar? 

Carnival and other cruise lines have been targets of a campaign to stop ships from sailing past St. Mark’s Square on their way into Venice. Posters and banners supporting No Grandi Navi (no big ships) aren’t to be found everywhere in Venice, but they’re not hard to find either.

Inevitably, the story alleging a close brush with shore got shoehorned into that narrative: that cruise ships are dangerously big and cruise lines are not to be trusted.

And, of course, the shadow of Concordia still hangs over all things cruise in Italy.

There might or might not be sound reasons to reroute cruise ships from the Giudecca Canal. But hopefully any decision will be based on the merits and facts, not on allegations about something that was really nothing.  

Cruise ship passed 'dangerously close to shore

Fury of Venetians after 110,000-ton cruise ship passed 'dangerously close to shore to perform salute to company shareholder'

• 
  

By HANNAH ROBERTS

PUBLISHED: 18:26, 28 July 2013 | UPDATED: 19:23, 28 July 2013

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• Carnival Sunshine appears to pass within 20m of city's fragile shoreline
• Liner is owned by the same parent company of the Costa Concordia
• Ship botched its manoeuvre, witnesses claim, squeezing other boats

Ventians have reacted with fury after a cruise ship allegedly passed within yards of the city's historic banks while performing ‘a salute’ to a major company shareholder.

Film footage of the Carnival Sunshine, which is owned by the same parent company as the notorious Costa Concordia, appears to show the 110,000-ton liner passing within 20 metres of the city's fragile shoreline.

The ship botched its manoeuvre, squeezing a vaporetto water taxi and other boats between the ship and the bank, witnesses claimed.

People in Venice have reacted with fury to footage showing a cruise ship which appears to pass within yards of the city's fragile shoreline - and show a water taxi, circled, squeezed between the liner and the bank

At the time of the incident an 150ft super yacht belonging to former Carnival CEO and major shareholder Mickey Arison was moored on the same part of the shoreline, the local newspaper Nuova Venezia reported, fuelling rumours that the manoeuvre was an in fact a sail-by salute.

The incident raises the spectre of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which sank after hitting rocks off the coast of Tuscany during just such a salute to the island of Giglio last year.

 

Writer Roberto Ferrucci, who filmed the exercise, told the Italian news agency ANSA: ‘I was sitting at the café reading on the bank, as I often do, when I saw the ship tailing.

Rather than moving towards the centre of the channel it almost brushed the shore causing a vaporetto to get caught dangerously between the ship and the bank. It was shocking.’

Carnival have denied any wrongdoing saying it was ‘a safe transit’.

Witnesses claimed that the Carnival Sunshine botched its maneouvre as it sailed in the Venetian waters

Writer Roberto Ferrucci filmed the ship from a vantage point at a cafe and called the move 'shocking'

But Venice’s proud residents are already up in arms about the presence of large cruise ships passing through the lagoon, with protesters last month calling for a ban on all those that pass by St Mark's Cathedral.

The committee of the No to Big Ships group denounced the latest incident as ‘reckless’. 

A statement said: ‘The reckless manoeuvre or error destroys the argument that an accident in St Mark's basin is impossible.’

Local councillor Beppe Caccia tweeted 'Shame on you Mr Mickey Arson, Sunshine putting Venice at risk.'

A 150ft super-yacht belonging to major shareholder Mickey Arson was moored on the same part of the shoreline, sparking rumours that the Sunshine had performed a 'sail-salute'

Environmental group Codacons called for port authorities to seize the ship pending an investigation by prosecutors.  

Andrea Orlando, minister for the environment, said that the number of ships must be reduced. 

This episode 'confirms the high risk we are taking,’ he said.

A statement from the cruise company said: ‘Carnival intends to prove that the few metres claimed by the witness are in fact 72 metres and that the brush is no more than a safe transit carried out in accordance with the rules of transit.'

A spokesman said reports of a 'salute' were 'unfounded'.

'The passage through the Venice Lagoon occurred in full compliance with navigational regulations and well within the accepted parameters for distance from shore,' the spokesman said.

'The Carnival Sunshine passed more than 70 metres from Riva dei Sette Martiri on the planned route. The distance from shore has been confirmed by the Coast Guard, the local pilot association and Carnival Cruise Lines.'