To say Christine Duffy is among the most powerful women in the cruise industry is no overstatement. She presently heads a 26-ship cruise company that annually hosts more than five million guests and employs more than 40,000 people from more than 110 nations.
Duffy joined Carnival Cruise Line in 2015 after serving as president and CEO of the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) and is a former travel agent who spent 10 years at Maritz Travel Company, spending six years as president and CEO. She brings an unrivaled travel industry perspective to her role at Carnival.
We spoke to Christine during a Carnival Sunrise voyage following the ship’s $200 million renovations and re-christening as part of Fun Ship 2.0, a $2 billion, fleet-wide ship enhancement program launched in 2011.
The former Carnival Triumph was officially named Carnival Sunrise last week by its godmother, Kelly Arison, the daughter of Micky Arison, Carnival Corporation & plc’s chairman and his wife Madeleine, in a ceremony last week at the Manhattan Cruise Terminal.
TP: Why did Carnival opt to put $200 million into a 20-year-old ship versus building a new vessel?
CD: I think people aren’t building ships of this size anymore, and these are great ships. But, when you have a fleet the size that we do and as the ships do get older, the opportunity that you have to completely transform a ship, and add the features we know guests love, really creates a new ship, for us.
It also gives us the ability to have different ships of different size an go into different ports that not all of the ships can. Unless you are Seabourn or a luxury brand where you’re building a smaller ship or an expedition ship, for the brands like Carnival the ships are getting bigger.
The investments we’re making is a way to maintain the fleet size we already have and give people the number of options that have to sail with us. Each [ship] has a lot of the Fun Ship 2.0 features, each one is a little different.
TP: Considering most travel advisors are now home-based and a large percentage are independent contractors, how will you engage them going forward with a physical sales force?
CD: I would say with technology today and webinars, I think it’s not the same because it’s true, there are fewer brick and mortar locations. And even the [agents] working full time aren’t the ones you can visit.
So we have a sales force, but we’ve also invested a lot in our GoCCL system for travel agents. I think we’ve been recognized for being able to provide among the best training through our program, which I think is really important for independent contractors.
We really believe the more we can provide tools to the travel professionals and training and education, I think they will be better advisors, and make sure they get the right people on the right cruise ships and brands.
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TP: Does it concern you that surveys indicate 80 percent of agents work through a host, yet only about 16 percent always sell preferred suppliers?
CD: It doesn’t concern me at all because a preferred supplier is one that is preferred by the host agency. I actually think it proves my own philosophy because we have had this debate for many years. People say to us, ‘Do you support travel agents? You know, you have Carnival.com.’
The point is the consumers choose. The consumer makes the decision about what works for them. If you’re a great travel professional and you keep in touch with your customers and you build a business people are going to come back to you. A good travel agent is going to listen to the customer. Now, if it happens to be a preferred supplier, then that’s great. But at the end of the day, it’s about what the guest wants and is that person going to come back to you. Also, today’s agencies also have so many preferred partners…so, who’s not preferred?
TP: What features did the company seek to add in this $200 million renovation of Carnival Sunrise?
CD: We want to modernize the ships [and] make them lighter, brighter and not as heavy. There are a lot of things that remain on this ship. [But] I think it’s the lighter, brighter, more contemporary look, and the branded spaces are pretty consistent with our other ships when we put them in. We wanted to make sure there was some consistency.
People were coming aboard some ships and they’d say ‘Where’s the Guy’s Burgers Joint?’ We didn’t have Guy’s Burger Joint on a lot of the ships. If there’s an expectation, then we want to be able to deliver that. That’s why we made a commitment there would be a set of features that would be consistent across the fleet by the end of 2020.
There’s more cabins, more suites, a [higher] level of investment. It’s not unlike a home renovation. Folks update their homes a lot with soft goods or put in a new kitchen or bathroom. Then there are times when you have an old house, you move out, you gut it, and re-do it or re-do most of the house. That’s the way I think about these things.
TP: How would you describe the transition from heading CLIA to serving as leader of one of its largest companies?
CD: The great thing for me being at CLIA for four years is I had close exposure to every cruise line in the world. I bring perspective. And because I’ve been a travel agent I think I have the orientation of what it means to be selling cruises, to be selling travel and what are the trends with consumers. Then being at CLIA and understanding all of these complexities – technical and regulatory and competitive issues and how do you grow the category? There’s a whole language in the cruise industry that at least I understood.”
