With cruising on pause, Carnival Corp. CEO Arnold Donald
said the company’s nine brands are taking the opportunity to improve upon every
aspect of their business, including relationships with travel advisors.
“We are taking advantage of this pause,” Donald said. “Personally,
I spend a lot of time talking to travel professionals to say, ‘Look, when we
come out of this, we want to be even better in supporting your business than we
were before. So, you tell me some of the things we can do differently.’ I’ve
engaged with them and they’ve given me comments and thoughts on what we can do
right now during the pause and after. And we’re going to incorporate all that
stuff.”
Arnold Donald
Donald said the conversations he’s had with the trade have
been more open and direct than in the past, for which he is grateful.
“We do this all the time but it’s different being in this
environment,” he said. “Everybody is being a little more raw, they’re saying, ‘Here’s
the deal.’ They’re not posturing, not positioning, not negotiating. They’re
being open and saying, ‘Here’s really what I see and how I feel.’ Everyone
feels we’re in this together and we’ve got to talk turkey here. It’s an even
higher level of candor and openness.”
Donald also sought to reassure the trade while acknowledging
their pain.
“This is a brutal shock to everyone,” he said. “It’s been
devastating for the travel and tourism industry. And while we are still here as
a company and we will be vibrant and over time be back to where we were, going
through it has been awful. ... We will come out of it. If people can find a way
to hang in there, to take a pause and just get through it, it will come back.
We have an unbelievable experience for guests, a tremendous value relative to
other forms of vacation and holiday travel. And it’s going to come back. But
they have to survive the pause. We’ve done what we can in terms of honoring
commission on canceled cruises and FCCs and to try to provide some support for
the travel professionals out there. And we’re pulling for them all. It’s a
tough situation but the future will be bright.”
Donald said that Carnival is looking at every aspect of its business and taking
advantage of not having to take care of 13 million passengers. The company’s
main objective over the past few months has been the monumental task of
repatriating its tens of thousands of crew members, an ongoing process that is
winding down.
“Now we are beginning to move into a phase where we can plan
for the future,” he said.
Donald has been in conversations with destinations and
ports, talking to the prime ministers and tourism ministers around the world,
to understand how to improve their partnerships.
Internally, the brands are looking “at everything we do. How
can we be more impactful in what we do, more efficient in what we do, and what
can we do to further enhance the guest experience.”
Donald believes the industry and
Carnival Corp. will be stronger when this crisis ends, but said it will take
time.
“We’ll be back and be back strong,” he said. “We have to be
a little patient now and not jump the gun and not have all the answers at once.
We have a sense of urgency, but we need to be thoughtful and considered in what
we do. Collectively, the industry has aligned around that.”