Immersive Travel Experiences: Treanor, Arnold W. Donald, and Manfredi Lefebvre d'Ovidio #FIIPRIORITY

So my two young inspiring world travelers are going to put us to work here and inspire everyone of us and keep us moving. Excellent gentlemen, talk to me. If I might start with you, Arnold, you know they say that travel broadens the mind among many other things and all that good stuff. But let's have a look at where we are today because I have a feeling we're moving around the world more than we've ever done before.

Manfredi, so who's traveling? I mean we heard about all the young people that are going to inspire the world. I mean they might not be your customers today, but they will be someday. Talk to me, where in the world are you going? Where do they want to get to? How different are they traveling? Just bring us up to date in terms of what you've seen in trends.

First of all, the amount of people that are traveling is increasing from all nationalities and age span because people continue to travel. I mean I'm a great traveler, I'm 70, I travel all the time and once upon a time it wouldn't have been so. This is because the passion of learning the world through visiting it directly, even though we have so many means to read about places and see the photographs, etc., the desire to visit places is growing and growing and growing. And the desire to be engaging with people is growing. So we have a number of reasons to travel. I call it the tourist, it's more than one. You have a segmentation which is unique. For example, here I flew from Europe especially for this conference. Why? For more reasons besides the friendship with Richard and tragedia, it is because it is a learning experience and it's an opportunity to engage with people. So it's a great thing. You have people that travel to do shopping, Milan is a great capital of shopping. You have people that travel to visit beautiful natural places, historical sites, the Antarctic, the Arctic. So the segmentation is amazing. And as industrialists of the sector, we are producing products which are for every kind of experience which is desired and every kind of customer. The level of service that people want has increased. Once upon a time when I was operating Silversea Cruises, a 350 square foot cabin was good. Today for many people it's small. People are getting more demanding. And when I started there were no spas on the ships or gyms. Now gym is essential, not for me, I never go in a gym, I hate sweating, but for many people it is essential. And now destinations, okay, sometimes the world shrinks or expands. A vacation that I adored was visiting the Russian Far East which is pristine nature. I opened the cruise there, was the first one to send a cruise ship there. Today it's impossible. So the world is shrinking. There are other locations where you can go, but you know, geopolitics, we'll talk about it maybe, but we talk about it in a minute. It has a huge impact on this. It widens and it shrinks, it widens and it shrinks. So you have to be ready, you have to be adaptable and be ready to move with it.

And talking about that, it is about keeping our business going today. But I think this business is becoming very competitive and you know the consumer knows what's going on, the consumer is a lot more demanding. So costs are higher and that. But how do you, is there a way that you can future-proof your business if you're in the travel and tourism business?

Manfredi, come back to geopolitics. I was in Cairo just two days ago and there was nobody there. It was so quiet. It was very, very clearly, and Cairo is not the big hot point at the moment, but the neighborhood is, isn't it?

Yeah, until the 7th of October it was the hottest destination, everybody wanted to go there like Capri or Sopot. Then it was Egypt, Cairo and the Nile. Now it's affected, it's a terrible situation. All because the revenue of the Suez Canal has dropped by 50%, the revenue from tourism has declined to almost zero. So for that country it's a terrible situation. So politics affect it all the time. But you know, there are other things which reopen countries. You were talking about Saudi Arabia, now we're touching 100 million visitors with about five years in advance of what was the plan, which is amazing. I was lucky enough to visit Saudi Arabia during the COVID period, also once with you, we were together. And I realized that Saudi Arabia is not a sandbox full of oil, it's a country full of culture, ancient culture, current culture, traditions, natural beauties, pristine beaches and also human structures built now which are the nicest. I mean, and that's exciting because it's a new destination. I mean that's the other really exciting thing, they're building it. It's like if sometimes you go to visit Chicago, why do you go to visit Chicago? It was the best architecture between the two wars and before the war. No, because it's the modern. Now Saudi Arabia is building some of the most iconic buildings and the projects are there to build them both in touristic destinations as in the cities. So this is a new destination which is building up something new we would not have expected. I was going to Saudi Arabia in the '70s, I was a total, it wasn't a lot to do. I was closed in a queen's building palace in Jeddah because the city was Jeddah at the time. I couldn't, there was nothing to do. You would eat in the house, you would do everything in the house and then you would work. It was a closed society. The people in the houses were living well but outside there was nothing. You go now to Riyadh, you go in a district where there are restaurants, etc. It's very lively. It's still traditional but very lively. And for the travel and tourism industry, like finding a new destination, I mean that hasn't happened for many, many years too. So that's got to be very exciting.

Where are the sort of hot spots at the moment? Where do people really, really want to go?

Manfredi, let's have a look at the technology because I think so much has changed. Everybody has access to information. I mean years ago fine we could read a guidebook or we could get a brochure, whatever, but we can find out so much. And the fact that we can book easier and all of that, how is technology changing this industry?

You're talking to the less technological person in the room. I kind of thought that you still like to pick up the phone to get there. But besides that, I mean I hear my people and then we talk about this all the time. So how many things can be improved? For example, the passenger, my segment, every person that travels with us is an individual where we want to know everything about him to serve in the best way. The crew on the ship needs to know what is his favorite cocktail, where he's been in the past with us, etc. So profiling is very important. So this can be very helpful. I think in the mass market booking centers, the first access will be through artificial intelligence voices. They can do the voice, the language with the accent much better than any other person anywhere because they will have accents and then they will be able to respond very fast to most of the questions and the needs. And you pass to human only if you need some more intellectual intervention for the time being. So there are many of these uses, not to mention within the company process, accounting, legal documentation and all of that.

You know, talk to me because technology is shifting so.

You know, before we jet off and go off on our cruise, I need a quick word from you in terms of the future of this industry. Where do we think we're going? Because we're fresh out of time. Manfredi, 30 seconds.

I mean I think that it's a combination of two things. You need a lot of entrepreneurial spirit to start new things. I'm starting something new, I'm bringing Abercrombie & Kent to a next dimension. It was the biggest infrastructure in the upscale market experiential travel. We are expanding it as a territorial positioning, we can have offices around the world to handle our guests and also distribution and products. We're going to do more camps, this and that. So we're increasing our footprint. And with Crystal, we're going to build more ships at a higher standard than our competition because we don't want to be in the competing pack. But besides that, which is clearly the product of an entrepreneur, it will be needed gradually also more consolidation. Because there are many in the hotel space, there are a lot of consolidations. But if you go beyond that, okay, the cruise space, there's a lot of consolidation, maybe still room in the mass market segment. But if you go in the luxury segment, it's a number of small businesses. There's no pure luxury player in the luxury space. If you want to look at the fashion business, you have the Kering group, you have LVMH, you have several. The watches, you have the Swiss group, Richemont. If you go to travel business and you want to invest in a share which is related to the high-end consumer, with the limits and the positives, that consumer which is very resilient, you don't have it. Right? So there's something that we need to be looking at.

I got to move this on. We'll all be downgraded.

All right, on that note we're going to have to leave it. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Manfredi, thank you so much. And Arnold, so much.