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- 00:00And I do want to go back and start this conversation. Back in the late nineties when you joined Royal Caribbean, which was still a relatively small cruise operator, now one with 16, $17 billion in annual revenue. But who’s counting? And I am curious as to what you thought about when you walked through the doors or at least walked into your office as a CEO and tried to sort of map out how you would actually grow this business? What was that thought? Well. Well, you know, Romain, first of all, thank you for having me. And as you say, this industry has grown by leaps and bounds over the period. 35 years ago, we were we were a small, very successful cruise line. But cruising was just a niche operation. And what’s happened is cruising has become a mainstream part of the vacay, everybody’s vacation expectations. And as a result is that we’ve gone from being a really small operation at the edge of vacation to being the most of that one of the most valuable, if not the most valuable company in the vacation business. Larger than any airline, any hotel, almost anything you can name. And it’s because cruising offers such amazing value in such amazing time for our guests was sort of the success and not just of Royal Caribbean, but even a couple of your peers. Was that largely due to the way that you marketed the product? Or was it a little bit more organic? How did you get there? No, I think it’s not so much the marketing. It’s what we offered was a product that appealed to everybody. We went from product that appealed to a small part of the total vacation market, mostly older or retired people. And now we have something for everybody. We have large ships, small ships. The ships are spectacular. It’s really delivering the light. I don’t actually hate to I like using the title of the show, the name of the book, but we deliver the wild to our guests and they love it. And the result is the people who come back from a cruise vacation don’t just rave about it. They’re obnoxious about it. I love it. So it’s interesting, Richard. I mean, you think about your tenure at the company, As Romain said, over three decades. You were CEO from 1988 to 2022. Something big happened in 2020, of course, that global pandemic. And I have to imagine that must have been one of the more challenging parts of your ten year tenure. Just talk a little bit about that time, because obviously any type of travel was really in the front line of what was affected. Well, Katie, first of all, thank you for bringing back the worst time of my life and making me relive it. But you’re absolutely right. It was a terrible time. It was a time when almost everybody we talked to said this is an existential risk to your business. The likelihood is that you just won’t survive. And everybody else we talked to said, okay, your focus has to be how are you going to get through this? And I think what made us successful in getting it through was we refused to do that. We said the objective isn’t to get through this. There’s no point in getting through it as a crippled entity. What we wanted to do was get through, show that we were strong and that we emerged from the pandemic strong and ready to grow. And that’s, of course, exactly what happened. And so when when you left in 2022, I mean, you think about where the world was and what it felt like, and there were still a lot of doomsayers predictions that, you know, travel wouldn’t return to levels that we had been prior to the pandemic, that things had fundamentally altered. As you sit here in 2025 and you reflect on how you felt when you left in 2022. I mean, how close are those to two visions? Well, actually, we did anticipate this, you know. Yes, you’re absolutely right. There were an awful lot of people who were predicting doom and gloom. The vacation business would never come back. But those people weren’t talking to our guests. Those people weren’t listening to the public. Those people were dealing with their own fears. We were dealing with the facts that the that what we were offering. And I love the pictures you’ve got on here are just so exceptional. We were providing such an amazing vacation and we were looking at our forward bookings. We were looking at our loyal guests. And so our goal in at the beginning of the pandemic was to make sure that at the end of it, we were strong, that the product we were offering was extraordinary. And that’s exactly what happened. The passion of our people was overwhelming, and they delivered the wow, That is at a very reasonable price. And the result was predictable. The market has boomed. I am curious right now, Richard, as to the current state of the cruise industry, and I mean it more from the side of the companies themselves with regards to being able to hire and more importantly, hire the right people at the right price. And also, of course, getting your hands on the suppliers and other materials that you need, particularly in light of some of the inflation that we’ve seen out there. What’s been the process that you’ve seen with your CEO and some of your peers out there right now in managing that? Well, actually, again, we’re seeing a lot of people worried about will we get able to get enough people? Will we be able to attract the guest? Will tariffs cause a problem with our supply chain? Well, and I’m very fortunate that my successor in Jason Liberty, has been an extraordinarily good leader. But we have over 100,000 employees. And frankly, it hasn’t been a real challenge to hire them or our goal. I mean, the whole book is about our culture, and our culture has made it possible to attract the best and the brightest. And we’ve had no difficulty attracting the people we need as we emerge from the pandemic. And we’ve continued to grow at good rates. We’ve had very little problem on the supply chain side. It’s a little difficult, but, you know, there’s always some challenge. But basically we’ve been able to meet our needs without frankly, we’ve been able to control our cost to a remarkable degree. So I think it’s again, one of the things where we shouldn’t spend our time looking at people who are press releases, who don’t necessarily talk to the guests, don’t talk to supply chain. We should look at the facts on the ground and we should have a culture. And the thing I’m proudest about in my 33 years was participating in developing that culture that created creates the while, but creates a while not only for our guests, but also the supply chain people delivering what’s needed to the ships, the crew members delivering what’s needed for the guests. Also with regard to those employees. And I am curious just about longevity. I mean, you’ve been with the company for more than three decades as CEO for 32, 33 years of that. Is that type of longevity normal for other folks out there, not just the CEO? That type of longevity is is not typical of CEOs. I think in the United States, average is somewhere in the range of six years. And one of the beauties of being in that position so long and I did have I had the best job in the world. But one of the beauties was you get to work with people, you get to develop people. And so the top management at Royal Caribbean are all long term of the average of an officer. Royal Caribbean is like more than 15 years today. And that means they’ve seen it all. They’ve been through different crises just like any other industry. We have our crises. 911, it was the Great Recession. It was copied, but the culture helped drive us to find solutions to what the problems were and continue to look forward, not back. Well, to that point, Richard, I want to reflect back on your tenure at Royal Caribbean. Like you said, you lived through a lot of different crises and you lived through a lot of different economic cycles. And you think about where we are right now. There’s concerns about the labor market. We know that consumers are really tired after years of inflation at these persistently high levels. I mean, thinking back on past periods of high inflation, what was it like managing through that and what experience would would what how would that experience inform how you would handle this period where, again, inflation and prices just seem stubbornly high? Well, I do think in coming back to Romain’s point, I think the fact that we all have lived through this before and had the experience and so we have the confidence to be able to look long term. Everybody else is looking at next month, next year. We have the ability because we’ve all been through this, as you say, so many economic cycles, so many other kinds of crises, to know that you do emerge on the other side now, where we’re benefit in the cruise business, because not only do we provide a fantastic vacation and by the way, I’m happy to sell a cruise if we can get to that in the program. But if I can sell you a cruise, I can point out that the cruise is actually a good value. So what we’ve seen in recessionary times is the cruise industry doesn’t suffer as much as some other industries because we’re good value. And during bad times, people look. People don’t stop vacationing. They just are more careful about what they choose. And when they look at us, they find us good value for money. So that experience, the culture of everybody aligned to a long term goal. Those things have gotten us through in the past and I feel very good about where they’re getting us to today.
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Cruise Industry Has Grown By Leaps and Bounds: RCL Chairman
October 20th, 2025, 10:01 PM GMT+0000
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