Maintaining the brand
A brand is only as effective as the people being asked to live it, so people are an important component of a brand. Dickinson contrasts the approach he wants his employees to take with that of a posh hotel.
“The Ritz-Carlton is a very nice experience,” he says. “You wouldn’t call it fun. It’s very nice. It’s very elegant. There’s not necessarily a lot of smiling there. There’s not a lot of interaction with the guests.”
For guests to be happy and have fun, Dickinson knows he has to keep employees happy.
“You have to treat the people very, very well,” he says. “The senior management and I have to be very tuned to the shipboard morale and everything else and be very, very confident that we’re doing the right things and treating everybody with respect and dignity. Could you imagine if that wasn’t the case? The CEO goes onboard a ship to face 900 crew members. He’d be in danger of his life.”
Dickinson doesn’t just rely only on anecdotal evidence to gauge crew satisfaction.
“Several years ago we introduced a crew comment card,” he says. “We asked the crew to evaluate everything — from me to the captain to the cooperation shoreside, their immediate department heads, the quality of their cabins, the crew area, the gym, the lounge, crew food, the vision of the company — everything. We get an evaluation twice a year and we can tell immediately what the issues are and then we can address them. We’re getting a formalized feedback from the crew, very systematic, very easy to put metrics around it.”
With that information in hand, the company can take immediate action.
“If we have a change in chef on a particular ship, and all of a sudden there is a huge amount of pushback on the food, we find out what the problem is — too bland or too spicy, too this or too that — then we get it sorted out,” he says.
Contented employees can more easily dedicate themselves to delivering on the brand.
“We have a guest focus; it’s all focusing on hospitality,” Dickinson says. “Everybody can do their jobs, but to do it with a smile and to bring warmth into the vacation atmosphere is so much more desirable.”
The company also uses programs run by a local university to help its more than 30,000 employees based on shore and across its 21 ships to learn to work better together to make sure the actual guest experience matches the experience the brand is selling.
The company also watches trends in the vacation industry to make sure the brand stays associated with quality and doesn’t fall behind its competitors.
“For example, two years ago we introduced Carnival Comfort Bedding, taking a cue from what was happening in certain segments of the hotel industry —Westin Heavenly Beds and so on,” says Dickinson.
A good way to understand how well your brand is being delivered is to experience it like a consumer.
“When was the last time you bought your product, you went on your Web site, you went to your retail store — whatever it was — through the eyes of a consumer?” says Dickinson. “What is that consumer experience? How does it compare to your competitors’ experience?”
The experience for Carnival’s customers has been a good one, and its financial results reflect that. Carnival Cruise Lines is part of Carnival Corp., which owns several independently operated cruise lines.
The parent company posted revenue of more than $11 billion last year, up from $6.7 billion in 2003. The company does not break out revenue for individual cruise lines, although Carnival Cruise Lines, which carried 3.3 million passengers last year, is the largest single contributor to that figure.
And Dickinson will continue to make sure that the passengers who walk down the gangplank will do one thing on board — have fun.
“What makes our brand come to life is, when you go on a Carnival ship, everybody is having a good time,” Dickinson says. “This is not a reserved country club at sea. This is not an elitist vacation.
“People are enjoying themselves. People in their 80s will be dancing, where you wouldn’t catch them dancing on another ship.”
And you may just see Dickinson on the dance floor with them.
HOW TO REACH: Carnival Cruise Lines, www.carnival.com
