Jan Swartz, Carnival Corp.'s executive vice president of strategic operations, announced last month that she is planning to leave in April after nearly a quarter-century with the company. Swartz spoke with cruise editor Andrea Zelinski, and while she offered no hints as to what's next for her, she did discuss the challenges presented by overtourism, the Trump administration's interest in cruise taxes and leadership changes at Carnival Corp.
Jan Swartz
Q: Why are you leaving?
A: Coming out of the darkest days of Covid to have returned to this place and have the business under Josh's [Weinstein, Carnival Corp.'s CEO] leadership, opened up the opportunity for me to personally step out and take a beat to think about what I want the next chapter of life to look like. ... So after 24 years, I'm gonna catch a breath and see our family and friends and try new experiences, and then I'll have some space and time to think about what might come next.
Q: What is one of the biggest challenges the cruise industry is facing?
A: The cruise industry pause during Covid created new conversations with all of the stakeholders and many places around the world that we visit. ... And they now want to think differently about how they encourage and smartly manage tourism. I think a lot of that conversation is attached to cruise, although often in the places that are struggling the most with, quote, overtourism, cruises are 5% or less of the visitation. What we've seen since the return to service is deeper engagement by the cruise lines and more robust conversations with each destination.
Q: How do cruise lines work with those destinations?
A: Generally, our ambition is to engage deeply, listen closely and come up with win-win arrangements for each destination. Depending on the location, those conversations are more robust than others. I think every place has to size up what role they want cruise to play; our job is to educate them on what is the economic value we deliver. We also see many countries asking us to sail to their country or their city. The Dominican Republic has been encouraging a greater number of cruise calls; that is just one example that comes to mind.
Q: The U.S. commerce secretary called out cruise lines, saying they don't pay taxes, which we know they do. What do you make of cruising getting wrapped up in the Trump agenda?
A: We have some information sharing to do, because I think cruise has a great story to tell in terms of what we pay in taxes and all the ways that we contribute both employment and tax money.
Q: Carnival Corp. appointed new leadership at Princess, Holland America Line and Seabourn Cruises in recent months. What do you make of these changes?
A: These shuffles are a testimony to succession planning and having many senior executives with vast experience in a unique business. One of the ways that we internally can leverage our scale is by moving people between brands as a means of creating new leadership development opportunities for top talent as well as sharing ideas across the brands in a more organic way.
Q: How has the industry evolved since you've been here?
A: The growth of the industry since I joined has been dramatic. It went from a relatively small piece of the larger vacation pie to a more material proportion of most consumers' vacation consideration sets. I've had such an incredible journey helping and watching this industry grow so dramatically, really on the basis of offering a superior vacation alternative.