Unscripted Podcast: Setting Sail With Carnival

Well, thanks so much for having me here. I love the MVP conferences. I'll never forget, it was the first one after the pandemic that I actually spoke at, and you guys are just so warm and friendly and loving. I love spending time with you guys, so thank you for having me.

It's a blur. God, exactly. It's like a bad dream. But you know, one of the things that I just really absolutely love that you did is you dove in so deep and just being there for the travel agents during that time. And I think that's when I really got to know who Adolfo Perez is. But how did you get into the travel industry?

It's a very long story. We've got nothing but time, so we have to go back 42 years. I was working at a health spa in the juice bar, and every once in a while they made me wash the dishes, which I hated because I just didn't like touching other people's plates and food. It grossed me out. One day my boss came to me and said, 'Listen, we're closing the juice bar, it doesn't make enough money, and you're going to have to be a dishwasher.' I had applied for Carnival probably a month or two before that because an old employee, a waitress, had started working at another cruise line and she said, 'Oh, I know you go on cruises. You can go for like $15 a day if you're an employee.' So I ended up applying. The only company that would interview me was Carnival because I wasn't 18, I was only 16. The day she told me I was going to be a dishwasher starting tomorrow, I went home and happened to get a call from Carnival asking for my uniform size because I was starting in January. I was like, 'Yes!' The next day I went to the health spa and said, 'Listen, I'm leaving. I got another job.' She said, 'You didn't give me any notice.' I said, 'Well, you didn't give me any notice that I was going to be a dishwasher.' So I started January 2nd, 1982. We had just gotten the Tropical, so we were really just operating Mardi Gras, Carnival, and Festival, and then the Tropical had just arrived from the shipyard and they needed more staff to help with embarkation. That's how I got started at Carnival. Never left.

I was an embarkation agent. I basically did check-in, greeting people at the gangway, or doing what we called counts and the no-show list and all that kind of stuff. I did that for quite a long time. I worked there for two years, then I got a job in reservations at Carnival. I worked the weekends at the pier, I worked seven days a week for I don't know how long. I was a ticket ripper at Carnival once. Do you know what a ticket ripper is?

No, ticket ripper. This was in the air department. We used to do like 80% air back in the day, now it's minuscule. But the old tickets that were printed on those red things, if it was just a roundtrip ticket, you only use two of the coupons, so the third and fourth coupon were voided and you had to rip them. So it was my job to rip them. I did that for one summer.

Yeah, like a carbon copy, with red in it. So anyway, any of the voided coupons I had to rip.

At some point I became a reservation supervisor, then a res manager. Then back in 1991, my old boss who was the director of reservations decided to be a full-time mother and left. They split the department: res sales, which I was responsible for, and reservations administration, which is sailing support, all that stuff that happens behind the scenes, berthing, cabins, dining. They promoted us. I ran the call center from about 1991 until about 2011. I became a director in '91, then I got a promotion to vice president in I think it was '97 or '98. I did that for 20 years. I got an opportunity to go to London to open up a sales and marketing office for us there, which was totally out of my comfort zone because I had never done anything like it, never lived anywhere other than Miami. When they always say push yourself to do things that you're not comfortable with, it really did open up. First of all, it was an incredible experience to get to live in London for two years on their dime. I got to do so many different things, travel a lot personally and for business, go to cool places: Israel, Abu Dhabi, Spain a lot. I have friends that live in Spain. It really was an incredible experience. When I came back after my assignment was over, I worked in marketing for about a year and a half. It was kind of not a real job; they had to bring me back, and my old job was given to somebody else in the call center, which I gladly gave up. Then in 2015, this job became available. I started with the sales team, and over time I've gotten Australia and international sales as well as trade marketing in Australia, so we have an office in Australia that I'm responsible for.

Wow, I didn't know it was that long.

Yeah. And if you, I wondered so when you went through every transition, was it just uncomfortable the change, or the not knowing what it was going to be?

I would say the biggest scary thing was the going to London part. I mean, I did other things. I opened up a call center in Colorado Springs. We also opened up for a while a call center that did brochure orders in Manila. Those were all risks that I had to take. But the biggest deal was leaving my job that I could do with my hands tied behind my back and blindfolded for 20 years to do something completely different in another country. What I did was I gave myself a very short deadline to decide. The way it happened was I was in a meeting with my boss and some of my colleagues, and she says, 'Oh, we had just opened the Australia office, we're going to do our own sales and marketing in the UK, and I'm interviewing some people there, but I'd love to have somebody from inside if you have any ideas.' I jokingly raised my hand and said, 'I'll do it.' She goes, 'Really? I never thought you would want to move away.' I said, 'Well, I'm sort of kidding, but let's talk about it some more.' That was like a Wednesday. I spoke to her later that afternoon after the meeting, more details about it, although the details were limited. Then I went to talk to my ex-wife about the kids, because obviously I had two. I think they were like 12 and 15, or 10 and 15, something like that. I told them, 'Look, if you guys feel like I'm abandoning you, I'll only leave for two years. You guys can come visit, I'll come back to visit. But if you guys think that I'm doing something that's crazy, then I won't do it.' They were like, 'Yes, do it. It sounds exciting. We'll get to come.' That was Thursday. Then over the weekend I was texting my boss saying, 'Well, I'm 75% sure, I'm 85%...' and on Monday I said, 'I'm doing it. I'm in.'

No, I started in London in 2011.

I remember I'd fly on EasyJet for $49 or 49 pounds each way to Spain or wherever you wanted to go. It was so inexpensive. Traveling gives you a greater perspective on life, and having the ability to do it so easily really enhanced my experience there for sure.

Well, I'll talk a little bit about Celebration Key, which I think is really innovative for us. We have a private destination, a private island, in Half Moon Cay, which is an amazing idyllic spot, one of our top-rated ports of call. Guests love the ability to go to some uninhabited place and really just hang out and chill out. It's a very chill destination. We're always looking for different port destinations, how do we help develop some of the existing ports. If you think about Amber Cove, Grand Turk, these are places where we've invested a lot of money to make these destinations a great place to visit, and also helping the local communities because that's important to us. Then we finally, after I don't know how many years of trying to get a private destination in the Bahamas, we signed a deal with the Bahamian government to develop this amazing destination called Celebration Key. We just announced it a few months ago. It's on Grand Bahama Island, which is the island Freeport is on, so it's close by. One of the things we're always looking at is not only guest experience and great things for guests to do, but we're looking for ways to conserve fuel. We have very strong sustainability goals. Having the ability to get to a place that's so close to the US, from Miami it's literally around the corner. We have nine different home ports where we'll have ships that will visit Celebration Key. It is this amazing destination. I wish I could show you some of the renderings. It has the largest freshwater lagoon in the Caribbean. It's going to have two lagoons, six or five different portals where there will be family fun, one with slides, a big huge sandcastle. The lagoons are just amazing. There's going to be an adults-only area that will have bars, lounging chairs, and cabanas floating in the water.

There's a beach club for an elevated experience, which would also be adults-only. There's a kid splash zone. It's just going to be amazing. There's 1.2 miles of white sand beach. We are so excited. What we're doing is drip-feeding information as we get more info on the portals. I think we're about to announce the first one, if we haven't already, which is the adults-only one. I think it's called Calypso Bay, but I can't remember for sure. What's great about this place is, like I said, we like to leave places better than we found them. All of the retail, the food, everything is going to be with local Bahamian vendors. We'll have artisanal things that they'll sell from the Bahamas, as well as different food options. It's going to be really incredible.

It's supposed to start in July of 2025. The first cruises will start in July 2025. The thing that's great about it too is in Half Moon Cay, at least for now, we have to tender, which is never fun. Tendering can be suspended because of tide conditions or whatever, so sometimes we have to miss the port, which is not a great guest experience. This one we'll have initially two piers that will accommodate up to two Excel-class ships. Eventually we're going to add a second pier, I think in 2027, so we'll have up to four ships that can dock at the same time. We're also going to have the ability to build a pier in Half Moon Cay, which will change the experience a lot because it's one of the favorite locations, and the last thing you want to do is have to miss that port.

We have 26 ships. The 27th will officially join the fleet, but she'll start sailing April 25th, which is the Carnival Firenze, one of the Costa ships that we took. We took the Luminosa first, so that one was Carnival Luminosa, completely Carnivalized. The Firenze is the second one. They were brand new, intended for the Asian market, and when all the COVID stuff happened, they pulled the ships and put them back in the Costa fleet. But because Carnival's demand was so high, it just made more sense. They had just gotten two of the Excel-class ships themselves, and they had too much capacity for them in Europe, so it made more sense to move them over to the Carnival fleet. Firenze starts from Long Beach in April. I'm going to get to go see the naming. We just had the Carnival Jubilee join the fleet, which is the third Excel-class ship. She just started sailing from Galveston in December, a Christmas cruise. What's really exciting is we just found out we're getting two more Excel-class ships. One in '27, and I can't remember the date of the next one, probably soon thereafter. The fifth Excel-class ship. Those ships are really amazing. Have you guys had the opportunity to be on one of those?

Right. The original Mardi Gras was the first ship we ever had.

It's incredible. Yeah, we loved it. When you guys launched that and we went on that inaugural, we were just blown away. Actually, our nephew went on their honeymoon on that one because we loved it and they asked us, and we were like, 'Oh, we think you'll love it,' and they did. They absolutely loved it.

Great. Well, the Celebration was the next one in line, and she's just as cool and beautiful. We made a few tweaks to her as well as on the Jubilee. We're really excited that we're getting two more.

Carnival, we'd like to call ourselves America's Cruise Line because we have so many different home ports sailing out of the US. Carnival is accessible. The fact that we have ships in 14 different home ports around the US makes it so much easier and economical for people to go on a cruise. If you don't want to get on an airplane, like yesterday I was creeping delay at 15 minutes until it was finally 2 hours. The cost of an airline ticket for a family of four, imagine that. When you can pick up, get in a car, drive, and park at the port, that could be a cabin. Probably two more cabins. Plus, getting on an airplane is not the most exciting thing, going through TSA and all that stuff. Although it's great because you get to see the world, there are some hassles when it comes to traveling by plane. So accessible. We welcome everybody on board. It doesn't matter what stage of life you're in. We have seniors, we have kids, we have couples, we have singles. Anybody should feel welcome on board. I think one of the things that makes Carnival different is not only the atmosphere that we create on board for our guests to feel comfortable and really have an ability to enjoy themselves, but our crew. We're building beautiful ships like the Excel class, which has been extremely successful. The ships are beautiful. But at the end of the day, it's really what we call the software on board, which is our team, our crew members, our staff, our officers. They go out of their way to make people feel welcome. When you go on a Carnival cruise, you feel like you can talk to people, and you don't feel like nobody's better than you. I was at a conference on Carnival Dream a few years ago with one of our partners, and one of my colleagues at another cruise line said, 'People talk to me in the elevator. I can't believe it. It's not like that on XYZ brand.' I'm like, 'Yeah, I know.' People just feel comfortable. There's some crazy stuff. There's a guy that has tattoos on his leg of a funnel, and every time he's been on a ship he adds another funnel and the ship name next to it. There are some true die-hard fans. It's a lot of fun. We're not called the Fun Ships for no reason. And remember, fun is different for everybody. For some people it's getting in the action, some people it's just watching the action, some people it's sipping a cocktail at Serenity and reading a book, or going on the roller coaster, or whatever it is. We have something for everyone. So I think that's the feeling that I'd like to give about Carnival: everybody's welcome and everybody can have a good time.

Yeah. We got the Travel Weekly Awards, which is in New York every year, Reader's Choice Awards: Best for Families, Best Domestic Cruise Line. Not that consumers would care, but Best Group Department, Group Program. We like that. Our MVPs would like that. I don't know if it's the advisors watching or if everybody's watching. For the advisors, yes, that's a good thing for the travel agents. We've won Most Trusted Cruise Brand from Reader's Digest for I can't even remember how many years now, maybe five or six years in a row. Look, it's not to take away from anybody else because all the different suppliers offer great products. Ours is different than theirs, and theirs is different than ours. At the end of the day, there's enough people out there. You were asking how many people we carry: over 6 million people a year. That number is going to grow as our fleet continues to grow. We'll have 27 operating ships in April.

A couple things I would say. Last year we kicked off a program called Your Winning Plan, and it was all about exactly what we're talking about. When you think about independent contractors, people that are part of a host, a lot of times like you said they don't feel like they own their own business, and the last thing they think about is putting together a business plan. What I was saying during that time as we were going through this, we had seven different events where we teamed up with the Small Business Administration to put together a template on how to create a business plan. It doesn't matter if you're doing 100 bookings a year or 10 bookings a year, you need to have a plan. It is a business. It could be a hobby for somebody, I guess, but even if it's a hobby, why wouldn't you want to get the most out of it? So take time to put together a business plan: how am I going to go to market, what are my goals? If you don't set goals ahead of time, how do you know how you're doing? You don't have a way to make adjustments. Then you have to review your performance monthly, weekly, however often you want, because if you're falling behind you can make adjustments in your marketing, make more phone calls, send out more emails, whatever it is to drive more business so you get back on track. Or if you're doing way better, then you get to pat yourself on the back. Not that you should ease off for the rest of the year, but maybe this is going to be sustainable and I can continue to be as successful as I've been. So having those goal posts in place is important. The other thing is education: how do I learn more about the products that I'm selling? Because the more of an expert you are, the better chance you have of closing a sale and keeping a customer happy, coming back to you over and over. One of the values I think travel advisors bring to the table is that they are able to match a person to the right cruise line. Everybody's different. Would this person be happy on Carnival? Maybe not. Maybe they'd be happier on a different line. But if you learn about the products you're selling to become an expert, you have the ability to really advise. That's why everybody calls you travel advisors now. How do you advise them on the right cruise line, right ship, right itinerary, right cabin? And then on top of that, if you learn about the destinations that the ships go to, you can provide little insights and secrets: 'Oh, I know this great dive bar in Nassau that you should check out,' or 'This little diamond in the rough restaurant in San Juan.' Those little tidbits of information really help you become more of a storyteller. When you can add anything from a personal standpoint, it just strengthens the story.

Thanks for having me. Of course. Love you guys.