Thank everyone who's joining us today, and that's our entire community, including cruise line representatives, travel agents, Diamond lead executive partners, CLIA staff, and stakeholders from all over the world. We really appreciate your support for CLIA and being part of our community overall. So, I have the pleasure today of being here with Josh Weinstein, who I'll introduce in a moment, but I really thank you for your time, Josh. It means a lot. I know you have a very busy schedule. But I know people are very interested in what you have to say. But let me just kind of set the stage if I would. I mean, we're at a time in our industry of really amazing growth, high product demand, an order book that's absolutely amazing. But we have our challenges too. We have taxation challenges. We've got managed tourism issues we have to deal with. We've got environmental issues that we have to work through as an industry and remain committed to. So without the challenges, you probably can't have the success. You got to overcome them and that's why we're blessed to have talented leaders such as Josh and his counterparts in other senior positions in the cruise line. So, Josh, you're the CEO of Carnival Corporation and PLC, which is the broader Carnival Corporation, and you also have just taken over as chairman of our organization at CLIA for a two-year term. And I'm really looking forward to working with you in that capacity. And I'm really excited about not only today, but about the future, too. And I was wondering, Josh, if you maybe just give a few thoughts about your assumption of the role here with CLIA, and then we'll talk about your background and about Carnival a little bit.
Sure. Well, to be the chairman of CLIA, I've taken the reins from a fantastic chairman, Jason Liberty at Royal Caribbean. And from my perspective, the folks that are on the executive committee, which are Jason and Harry Summers and Francesco Vago and Joe Scott as well as a sitting observer, and Charlie, of course, the folks haven't changed. And I think that's really important because I think we look at our responsibilities as trying to oversee CLIA as something that doesn't change with the personality of who happens to be on the chairmanship time period that I'm holding right now. So the priorities aren't changing, the conversations aren't going to change, and the approaches aren't going to change. So, it's hopefully people see more of the same about us all trying to figure out how we help the industry move along in a very challenging environment.
Thanks, Josh. And I talk about the broader shipping community quite a bit, too. And I always remind people we're an industry in maritime of problem solvers, whether it's cruise shipping or liner shipping. And if you don't like challenges, you maybe picked the wrong line of work. You're always gonna have them. Josh, I thank you for your thoughts about continuity with CLIA and the direction you think we'll go. I need to thank you as well as the other members of the executive committee. You've been so super supportive as I know. I can't believe it's coming up on one year here in two weeks in this role. It's gone by so fast and I enjoy it every single day. One of the reasons I do is being able to work with all of you. So, Josh, I was wondering if we could turn for a moment just maybe on a more personal level. I mean, you're a recovering lawyer such as myself, and I know we both at various points of our career have held different types of roles. You've held many. How did you end up in the cruise industry and what did that progression look like for you?
So there's a super long version and there's a hopefully short version. The short version is I joined Carnival almost 24 years ago. Never cruised, didn't know anything about Carnival. But I knew I was not enjoying being a corporate lawyer working for an outside firm and there was a want ad in a legal newspaper that they were looking for an in-house position, pretty junior position, in-house lawyer. And I put my resume in and the next day I was in this office interviewing for a job. And I frantically called my brother-in-law because they asked me to come in on the same day that I made close contact with him, and he's a stock broker, and I'm like, tell me anything you can about Carnival Corporation because I know nothing. And he gave me the thumbs up and started to do the 10K real quickly for me as I was racing to the office from downtown. And so I joined 24 years ago. I took a, talked about before, a really big pay cut to do it. Because I knew I wasn't happy in my career and this was a chance to try something completely different. And within a week I knew I had found what I didn't really know I was looking for. It was a great team. It's great people. And then I got to take my first cruise. And when I took my first cruise, which wasn't until about 6 months or so in, it clicked. I mean, it clicked for me right away. I mean, I saw what we do on a daily basis and literally I saw thousands of people on a cruise with me, smiling, enjoying their time with their friends and family, making memories that will literally last decades. And that was all I needed. I knew that this was the corporation that I wanted to be a part of because what better purpose could you have, you know, coming to work every day than that? And I've loved that ever since.
That's interesting because Jason gave a similar response before. I'm sure all that's true. But I picked up on one thing in particular there that I think is useful for everybody. You took a pay cut. Yeah. To get into this industry. Yeah. That's probably not the case anymore, but I think what you're expressing is you took some short-term steps, maybe a little bit backwards in your career to get ahead in the longer term and something you really wanted to do more. Is that accurate?
Well, you know, at the time, we didn't have kids yet and it was really an inflection point in my wife and I's lives about, you know, what's our priorities and what's going to matter. And at the end of the day, if you, you know, I spent 12 hours a day at work or whatever it was, if you're not happy, that doesn't just make you miserable at work. It literally makes you miserable in life. I was driving my wife nuts. And so we talked about it after they gave me the offer, which was 40% less than I was making. And it was a bet on ourselves that we could make something of that life. And that happiness was worth something. I don't know if it was worth a 40% hike, but it worked out okay. But I do think, you know, the piece of advice that my parents gave me, they gave me a lot, but the one that resonated the most always was you got to love what you do. If you don't, go keep looking until you find it.
Well, I love that advice and I've been fortunate enough to be in a job like that myself where I wake up every day more excited than I was the day before about doing the job and so it really resonates with me. Josh, I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about your career progression within the company. I mean, you went from being a relatively junior corporate in-house lawyer to ultimately being the CEO. I know there were quite a few intermediate steps. I mean, I knew you when you were an expert in finance. I knew you when you were head of Carnival UK. And I know there were steps in between. How did those various steps along the way help you to be ready for the job that you're in now, which is admittedly by any measure huge, right?
Yeah, you know, there was no career path. I have been fortunate since I've been here that I've been able to love what I do. And so each of the jobs, whether it was being a corporate lawyer where if you think about the business, everybody needs a lawyer, right? Not for lawsuits, but for things like concession agreements and marketing and ship operations, all the manufacturers that we work with to get, you know, the ships running and well-maintained. So my starting point was I got to learn a lot about the business fairly superficially but a lot about the business working with partners all over this company. So, it was a great stint to be able to really start understanding the lay of the land. And then when they asked me to become the treasurer, that was a whole new spin, right? I mean, that was going from really a ground-up position to being able to see at a fairly high level the strategic priorities of the company and the financial side, obviously. And then, you know, I've been very fortunate because I've had folks really look out for my career and help me figure out what that next step could be. And people like David Bernstein who gave me the treasurer job, Arnie Perez, who gave me my first job as a lawyer, Arnold, who was the one who said, 'Hey, you want to go run the UK?' What the hell are you talking about? And Nikki who supported me coming back as chief operations officer when COVID was really starting to wreak havoc. So, I've had mentors and just icons in this industry looking out for me and helping me. So, I don't take that for granted. I've had a lot of good fortune and have been fortunate that every time they've put me in a role I've loved it more than the last one. But when you stack all of those experiences up and those different types of jobs, so I got to be a lawyer, legal side, and then finance, and then operations, there really just been building blocks along the way. So, when I took over as CEO, it was certainly a daunting job, but I felt like I had a lot of good angles that I could be looking at the business from and trying to support the teams.
Wow. Excellent set of experiences that must have served you so well and you had some great benefactors along the way. I mean, true titans in the industry. I was wondering if we could talk about Carnival Corporation a little bit in particular. You've got this series of brands, Holland America, Princess, Seabourn, AIDA, Costa, Carnival Cruise Line, of course. How do you manage maintaining the marketplace and the brand identity of those various brands under one corporate umbrella as you do? And does it have benefits that you have, you know, various brands that maybe wouldn't have otherwise been directly exposed to each other? How do you deal with that and how do you weigh it out plus or minus?
Well, so we definitely have a distinct portfolio strategy. Because we do not believe that there's one size fits all. Obviously, people from different cultures, different price points are looking for different types of experiences. And the fact is, if you go on a Carnival ship, and I love sailing on Carnival, you're going to get a very different experience than you would if you go on Cunard, which is a beautiful brand and one of the most iconic in the history of cruising. The way that we try to make sure that we're being true to each brand is we do not try to control the brand positioning or the brand ethos from one central, you know, brain trust in Miami. I mean, the fact is we've got six operating units. And we've got six incredibly capable presidents. I mean, you've got Christine Duffy, you've got Josh Leibowitz, you've got Beth Bodensteiner or Paul Ludlow, and Mario and Eddie. And they understand their brand. They understand their guests. They understand why people choose to sail with them. And they understand what their guests are looking for, not just today, but years in the future. Right? Because that's the type of planning that we need to do from an itinerary perspective, from the types of experiences we want to make sure our ships are equipped with. And really making sure then we empower those individuals to really run their operations. Right. We've got six operating units and I really try to give them the empowerment and the accountability to make their brand work. And we do have two small brands, Cunard and Seabourn, and they do piggyback on one of the bigger brands. But I think that business model is the right approach. Now, we're still federated because they do have to live within the confines of the corporation. We know we don't want everyone trying to be Carnival Cruise Line. We don't need that. We've got Carnival Cruise Line. We want Princess to be distinct and speaking to their guests and providing experiences that are very different. And so we have guardrails up. And then we get to work together, right? I mean, the beauty from my perspective about what we've created and what we run is I've got experts all over the world, right? We can legally share everything across these operating units and across these experts. And when I get my leadership team together, I've got those six presidents along with our chief maritime officer, our CFO, our general counsel, and chief HR officer. And we sit around the table to figure out what's the right strategy for the corporation overall. Where can we share learnings? Where do we leverage scale? What are the challenges that somebody's facing that have been faced somewhere else and we can take those learnings and use them to our advantage or opportunities and put them into the other brands. So I think we really get the balance right between giving brands the freedom and the necessary freedom really to run their businesses and still benefiting from the scale that is the biggest in travel and leisure.
Wow. I'm glad you mentioned Cunard because I think I'm on a very quick stream of consciousness list. I think I left off Cunard and P&O, but quick story about my own experience with Cunard. And I think it really speaks to how different people can go on a ship even in the same group and have different experiences. And years ago, when I was taller and had more hair, my now wife had never been on a cruise and she really did not want to go on a cruise. She had these stereotypical ideas about how awful it was going to be for her. And I said, 'No, no, you're wrong. You're wrong. Please come.' So she agrees and I'm almost dragging her up the gangway on the Queen Mary. We were doing an eastbound crossing and she never asked for much in this world, but she loved a particular brand of champagne. And as we walked through security and got on the ship, the very first thing she saw was a bar that served nothing but her favorite champagne. Her eyes got about this big and where I kind of had to drag her on the ship, I almost had to drag her off because we had such a nice time, you know. We could find venues that suited us even though we were much younger than the normal, you know, traveler with Cunard. It still was an awesome experience and she was, 'When can we go again?' So I really listen with great interest to how you're able to take advantage of that diversity of perspectives from your brands and help feed off of that. One other area where I think you consolidate that is with ship building. You do that at the corporate level, right? And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your perspective on new ships and, you know, your own order book, which is impressive amongst a broader industry impressive order book, and where you see that fitting in and where you see that fitting in with your outlook for the industry overall.
Sure. Yeah. So when it comes to us, we're actually moderate growth, right? We've got no ships this year. That's a first. You know, we've got one ship a year basically from 2027 through 2033. And of course we'll order more for the future but we are moderate on purpose. You know, my focus with my team has been on how do we get more demand and more pricing for the ships that we've got when we're undervalued still. What we give as experiences to our guests versus what we charge is still out of whack, especially if you compare it to land-based alternatives. And so I think the focus for us has been on really how do we drive that same ship's sales further by just doing better at our jobs. And so that's the primary focus. No, we supplement that with new builds and we've got, you know, like I said, one a year and most of which is going to Carnival and two of them are going to AIDA. But new ships are amazing. New ships are not what drive demand. The brand is what drives demand. And really knowing your guest, taking them where they want. Our destination strategy is a critical piece of that. And then just doing it right every single day. So, with respect to the industry overall, you know, I think it's certainly growing, growing faster than us as a corporation. It's not a market share game. We're all really small. We're all really small in the overall context of the vacation market. And so, yep, we're the biggest and yet I don't think that really matters. You know, brand by brand, they've got their strategies to, you know, tackle whatever markets they want, whatever segments they want. And from our perspective, we're going to stay true to that. And we don't try to chase the shiny new object, right? We got to keep our eye on the main thing, which is getting it right for that guest. And I think we're doing that pretty well.
And I know you touched on some of what might be a response here in your last answer, but as you combine together the brand loyalty that you have and the relationships you built with your customers and the travel trade community that's out there historically. But as you continue to evolve the company into, you know, just over time including integrating new builds, are there any, any secret, well not secret, but any particularly effective ways of finding that integration of protecting what you had while you still continue to move forward and do you see some resistance in that at times?
That's a good question. So, yes, we definitely see resistance at times. We usually see resistance before something new comes out and then once something new comes out, all of a sudden the resistance falls away and the guests, you know, are pretty happy with the new. I think every brand is focused on, and it's a delicate balance of keeping the brand ethos, keeping consistency across your fleet and across the experiences while still introducing the new into the mix. I think not just us, I think brand by brand if you look across the industry I think that's something that has happened for decades and that will continue to happen for decades in the future. I mean we want people to be as excited to go on one of our smallest oldest ships in a particular brand than they would on the newest biggest. So you do have to get that balance right. But if you're really clear in your brand proposition and you really lean into the consistency of delivering the experience, then you're pretty much halfway there.
Josh, I was wondering if we could shift gears and talk a little bit about ports and destinations because it's one thing to have great ships, but that doesn't work all that well if you don't have places to take the people. So as the world evolves around us and investments are made by the industry and by others, what sorts of keys to positive relationships do you have or have you seen with regard to working with local communities and ports and destinations to help support the business effectively and continue that strong mutually beneficial relationship?
Yeah. You know, I think we learned a lot over COVID to be honest with you. I think COVID was a bit of a reset in a lot of relationships. I think for lots of reasons. I mean, people get busy. People focus on their own business. Destinations will focus on what they need for their constituents and their economies. But a lot of times I think it almost became a win-lose type of situation as opposed to a recognition that we need each other. And I think that was a pretty healthy reset in a lot of cases. Because, you know, when you pull cruising out obviously we know what happened to us. We got no revenue. We had a lot more debt and we had no revenue. So, clearly we know the importance of being able to deliver on the experiences and taking our guests to amazing destinations. I think for a lot of destinations we had been taken for granted in some cases and maybe even a belief that we were taking advantage of our strength versus what they were looking for. And at the end of the day, I think it was a stark realization that wow, we really do need each other. And in that context, it's okay, we need to understand how do we win, right? How do we make the money that we need to be able to sustain our business? How do we do it in a way where the destinations are making what they need for their economies, that we can help provide jobs, that we can provide tourism dollars and frankly tourism insights into these destinations that might be a window that they might never have had before and we're the entryway for them to come back, not through a cruise, but because they love that destination and want to spend more time there. And we think that's wonderful. And so how do you do that? I mean, I think it's really building relationships and having real transparent conversations about what is it that we need and what is it that we can give and hearing the same thing from the destinations. And if we do it in the spirit of really trying to figure out how everyone can win, I think, you know, that's the right mindset. I think sometimes we get it super right and sometimes we don't. And we'll keep trying.
Well, you know, we're going to carry in 2025 collectively as an industry about 38 million guests, but compared to the global international travel picture, we are just scratching the surface. Couple percent, right? Yeah. So for those that may not be quite as familiar with your company as I am, you described ports and destinations, you mentioned various parts of the world. Could you maybe just give a sense of the deployment picture for your brands collectively in different regions?
Yeah, sure. So for Carnival Corporation, from a deployment standpoint, we are about 35% Caribbean. We are, I'm going to use
Round numbers because I don't have it in front of me. It's probably about mid-20s in Europe. It is low double digits for Alaska. What am I missing? And then we've got Australia and we've got just call it other, which could be world cruises, it could be exotics, etc. But if you think about where's the main thrust of our business, it is the Caribbean, it's Europe, it's Alaska, and then a bit for Australia, and then just again a lot of others all over the place.
And it might surprise some people to know, but it doesn't surprise me, your market presence in Europe is actually number one, and even in the Mediterranean, you're number one, right?
Yeah, that's right. So size-wise, we are quite large. I mean, if you think about the presence, we've got AIDA, which is the best in Germany. We've got Costa, which is the best in Southern Europe. We've got P&O Cruises, which is the biggest by far, coming out of the UK. So that's not even putting into account the ships that we put in over the summer from Holland America, from Princess, etc. So we do have an incredibly well-established and fantastic position in Europe. And it's not just the Med. Northern Europe is pretty fantastic, too.
So, Josh, I wonder if you might offer some comments generally about leadership and your own leadership style when it comes to how you lead a large corporation like this.
I'm still figuring it out. Four years, my fourth year. Look, I think I'm fairly transparent and I'm fairly authentic. I think I had a great leadership lesson on the fly, which is when I was taking over for David Dingle, who was running Carnival UK, who's an amazing, fantastic guy who wanted to retire. And I flew over to get introduced to the UK team. When I say the UK team, it was my introduction in Southampton. And there was probably about 12,400 people in the building in this grand atrium. And David Dingle, who's a very stately, reserved guy, was introducing me and all I'm thinking about is, God, look how David sounds. And you got Michael Thamm who had a similar role for Costa Group and Stein Kruse who was for Holland America Group. These are all legends in our industry, in our company, and they're all so stately and mature. And then I'm so...
Yeah. And so I'm getting introduced and I'm looking out at all these folks and in slow motion I'm thinking to myself, okay, I got to make myself a little bit more respectable and presentable and, you know, I got to be stately. And I'm thinking about this and I'm thinking about what does that mean? How am I going to sound? And it kind of, it just a light bulb went off and it was just like, screw it. There is no way I can be who I'm not because it will be too hard. It'll just be, I'll screw it up. And I'd rather be authentic and screw it up than screw something up because I'm trying to be something else. So I just said I'll temper the f-bombs, but I will just be myself and I'll do my best to lead the team. And the other thing that was amazing, but I was standing out there and it was a light-hearted interview. It was a lot of fun, just a little bit about getting to know me. But I realized at that moment that leadership actually meant my job, which historically had been a lot of doing, was I'm not going to do anything. I'm going to actually have to figure out how to give a vision to actually 25,000 people when you look at folks on the ship, not just shore side. And then support them. I mean, my job is going to be to support 25,000 folks in getting their jobs done and making sure that they have what they need and making sure we have the right priorities and we're going after the right priorities. But it's really about helping other people do their jobs. And that was nine years ago now, almost nine years ago. And I love that I had those two reflections in like a slow motion as I was getting into it, and I've been working on that ever since.
You know, Josh, I've rarely heard somebody advocate for and never seen anybody succeed that wasn't authentic in their leadership style.
So, I think there's really something to that, that you got to be you. And I really do appreciate, and I think those who know you probably do, how direct, candid you are. I mean, that's what people really can work with the best. I think obviously the scale is much bigger than when you were at Carnival UK. 25,000 probably seems like a small number today compared to what you're responsible for.
Yeah, it still seems big.
