An interesting story from Bloomberg quotes Royal Caribbean Cruises chief exective officer Richard Fain as saying that by 2011 or 2012, the cruise line will have more international than American passengers.
"Within a year or two ... we will be more international than US in both revenue and passenger cruise days ... All of our growth at this point is coming from overseas."
It certainly explains why the cruise line is investing so heavily in markets outside the US. Not just the UK and Europe, but it also has a growing programme in Asia and the Far East, and is also now dabbling in South America.
At the moment, 60% of all Royal's passengers are from the US.
Fain said Royal Caribbean has begun raising prices in some markets, including Europe, and added that there are no immediate plans to order new vessels.
Jane Archer
Comments (1)
erm...lets hope that the powers at be in RCI get the tipping cultures sorted out soon then...otherwise other countries will be unfairly labelled as being 'cheapskates' like we have been in the UK recently.
It's all very well having an international brand but they need to start acting internationally and not try to push the US methods onto everyone cos that just creats irritation and will, in the end, push people elsewhere to other companies that are more regionally based and who know and understand the local customs & cultures.
RCI tried a few emmersion cruises last year and they didn't go down well with the US guests who expected an American owned ship to server American food regardless of where it sailed...which pretty much blew the emmersion out of the water.
They need to sit down with those people who actually know and understand what makes each culture tick and balance a little bit of everything into the final product, otherwise they cannot call themselves a truly international company if they just do lip-service only.
Posted by Ally Jones | October 14, 2009 8:21 AM
Posted on October 14, 2009 08:21