Alan Buckelew was named COO at Carnival Corp. 11 months ago. He has overseen a half-dozen major initiatives since then to coordinate the company's brands and create synergistic cost savings. Recently, Carnival Corp. said it would relocate him to Shanghai, where it is expanding its foothold in the Chinese market. From Shanghai, Buckelew spoke with cruise editor Tom Stieghorst about the move.
Q: How long have you been in China?
A: I've been here for a couple weeks now and I'm still sorting through with all the lawyers [about] technically what's the best way to be here. I'm just on a business visa right now. When we sort out the work permits and all that, I'll officially start my job here.
Q: What has kept you busy?
A: Right now it's the same thing I've been doing all year: talking to potential partners in government, both regional and national, just trying to build a stronger relationship with the powers that be.
Q: How is your role going to shift to developing business in China?
A: I get to keep my day job, which is very exciting for me because I just went through all of these [initiatives] and I've been very focused on trying to make them successful. My new day job is focused on how [to] grow China in particular and Asia in general. I think everybody we speak to in China is pretty convinced that at some point in the future China will be the largest cruise market in the world. It will surpass the United States. For that to happen there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be put into place. My job is to sit down with various governments or ports or independent companies and say, "How do we partner so this infrastructure comes to be?"
Q: Have you lived in China before?
A: I haven't lived in Asia. I lived in Australia when I was much younger. The only similarity is the time zone. I spent over a year living there. I think living abroad in any country helps prepare you for doing so again. Starting with an English-speaking nation and moving to one where you don't speak the language is probably the easier path to go.
Q: What did you do in Australia?
A: I was with Sitmar back in those days. Sitmar was two separate entities, the Australian company and the American company, and the decision was made to put both of them under the American leadership.
Q: What are you looking forward to in China?
A: The exciting part is the size of the market, the scale here. It takes some time getting used to it. I'm not sure I'm fully acclimated to it yet. I was talking to an online travel agent the other day who said, "We have 120 million people in our database. And 80 million of them are active." These are staggering numbers. I know one of our brands announced a new venture coming into the market and within 24 hours they had over 350,000 members [on China's] equivalent to Facebook. If that were in the U.S. it would take them a couple of years to get to that level, if they worked hard. Here you can do it overnight.
So the potential here is so enormous, and to be kind of on the ground floor, trying to plot out the strategy. ... How does Carnival participate successfully in helping to grow this market, and what are the different paths and techniques and tools we should select to help the Chinese consumer reach their full potential?
Follow Tom Stieghorst on Twitter @tstravelweekly.