Tom Stieghorst
At first blush, it seems hard to grasp that the party-hearty Carnival Cruise Line and the charity-minded Fathom are related to each other.
Both are subsidiaries of Carnival Corp., but they hardly seem cut from the same cloth.
One has a long history in cruising. The other hasn’t even sailed its first voyage. One sails megaships. The other has only one fairly small ship. One is all about the fun. The other is about doing good.
How do these ships find themselves at the same pier? One key is the ownership by the Arison family, which has over the years profited from fun and then returned some of those profits by doing good.
The company has been particularly active in South Florida, where it’s based, and in areas around the world where it does a lot of business.
Its charitable emphasis can be traced back to founder Ted Arison, who quietly supported many nonprofits. To name one, he was the chief benefactor of the New World Symphony youth orchestra in Miami Beach.
Fathom takes Arison’s charitable impulse but melds it with a for-profit business.
“I’d like to think that Fathom was born into the legacy of goodness of the Arison family,” said Tara Russell, the president of the brand, which expects to sail its first cruise next April.
On a Fathom cruise, passengers will spend time helping to teach English to schoolkids in the Dominican Republic; to distribute water filters in areas of the country without clean, running water; and to provide labor at a rural women’s cooperative that makes chocolate.
Russell’s vision is that philanthropy is fine, but if it is combined with a buy-in from customers of a business, it is more sustainable and can be conducted on a larger scale than most charitable work.
It isn’t a proven model, at least not in the cruise business. But if any company can afford to try it, Carnival Corp. can. Fathom’s mix of fun and doing good will share the pier with Carnival at the new Amber Cove port development in the Dominican Republic, which opens next month.
It will be interesting to see if the two brands cross-pollinate as they bring passengers to the same destination.