Royal Caribbean fixed a massive passenger pain point
The cruise line has solved the most annoying problem many passengers face when cruising.
While cruise ships have become technical marvels, they still have limitations based on their size. There can only be so much seating in the buffet and the line will back up at the coffee shop or pizza place during busier hours.
There's no real way to speed up embarkation and disembarkation. When thousands of people want to get on or off the ship at the same time, that creates a bottleneck.
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The same applies for popular shows. If a ship has a theater that holds 2,000 people and 6,000 are onboard, that can create more demand than supply. That can be mitigated, to a point, but offering multiple showings, but not everyone gets to see "Mamma Mia" at 8 p.m.
On some sailings the casino may seem too small and on others, the sports bar may not have enough seats. Cruise lines can plan and engineer, but they can't factor in every scenario or make it so popular choices have no waits.
For most cruisers, the biggest pain point might be the cruise ship elevator. On embarkation day, most passengers want to go from where they board to the buffet or pool deck.
That can lead to long lines as few people will brave the stairs while still carrying their luggage. Things lighten up a little bit after the first few hours, but waiting for elevators remains a major pain point on most cruise ships.
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Royal Caribbean offers something better
Royal Caribbean is not the first cruise line to offer "destination" elevators, but it does seem to have perfected them better than other cruise lines. This new system, which is used on Icon of the Seas, Utopia of the Seas, and the upcoming Star of the Seas, solves multiple elevator problems.
First, it's important to understand how the system works.
Passengers enter their desired floor on a tablet which then shows them a letter. They then head to that lettered elevator and it takes them to their floor.
Sometimes, the elevator may make multiple stops, but usually no more than two.
This system elegantly solves multiple problems.
First, you never have the elevator open to find out that it's already full. Second, you never get in an elevator that either by its own design or from passengers pushing buttons, stops on every floor.
It sounds minor, but Royal Caribbean's destination elevators remove this major point and make your cruise easier.
Royal Caribbean makes other tech investments
Royal Caribbean has also tested bringing destination elevators to older ships but has yet to actually do that. The cruise line has, however, made other technology investments that passengers may not see as easily.
"We've got a lot of investments on the technology side. So obviously, our yield management program is – has a tremendous amount of AI inside of it, and that gets smarter and smarter," Royal Caribbean Group CEO Jason Liberty said during the cruise line's first-quarter earnings call.
Royal Caribbean also has some customer-facing innovation coming.
"We're installing a new travel platform that will be centered around the customer instead of being centered around the cabin. And then we have a lot of other, I would say, modernization activities and so forth that are taking some of the great learnings from the newer ships and rolling them back on to some of our legacy fleet," he shared (without saying exactly what those are).
Liberty also shared that he believes something that he often does not like has become an asset given the current economic climate.
"The combination, I think, of what we're delivering, combined with the value gap to land-based vacation, which as you – everyone on this call has heard me over time — it's frustrating to have that gap. But in times like this and we've seen this in other markets when there's economic concerns, that value gap is actually a pretty good buffer for us living our vacation experiences and our guests willing to pay for those experiences and for us to meet our financial expectations," he added.
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