Top Headlines

Ruben Rodriguez named President MSC Cruises USA

Details: Written by Teijo Niemelä Teijo Niemelä; Category: Top Headlines Top Headlines; Published: 10 February 2020 10 February 2020

MSC Cruises USA, the North American arm of MSC Cruises, has appointed Rubén Rodríguez as President and he will join the organization on March 18.

Rodriguez’s role will be to help the business achieve further growth and strengthen the Company’s strategy in the US region, both in terms of its commercial presence and brand awareness, and leverage long-term investments made in recent years.

Reporting to MSC Cruises’ CEO Gianni Onorato in Geneva, Switzerland, Rodriguez will also oversee the development of its future terminal in Miami, Florida which is due to open in October 2022 and Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve in The Bahamas which opened at the end of 2019.

The executive is experienced in the cruise business, having worked for eight years at Carnival Cruise Line. He was Executive Vice President Ship Operations between 2009 and 2015, and Executive Vice President Marketing and Guest Experience between 2007 and 2009.

Prior to joining Carnival, he was a Partner and Managing Director at management consulting firm The Boston Consulting Group.

Rodríguez more recently was CEO of Great Wolf Resorts, North America’s largest owner and operator of indoor water park family resorts, between 2015 and 2017. In the last two years, he has been a senior advisor and board member to a range of international companies and private equity firms, engaged in investments as well as growth and performance improvement programs for brands in the travel and leisure sectors.

He has a degree in mechanical engineering from Princeton University, a Master's in civil engineering from the University of California and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Rodriguez will work side-by-side with Rick Sasso, Chairman MSC Cruises USA, Ken Muskat, COO, MSC Cruises USA and the rest of the local leadership team based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He replaces Roberto Fusaro, who left MSC Cruises USA at the end of January for personal reasons.

TUI and Royal Caribbean expanding their TUI Cruises joint venture with the integration of Hapag-Lloyd Cruises

Details: Written by Teijo Niemelä Teijo Niemelä; Category: Top Headlines Top Headlines; Published: 07 February 2020 07 February 2020

TUI Group and its longstanding partner Royal Caribbean Cruises are planning to expand their luxury, expedition and premium cruise segment and to attract new target audiences for luxury cruise products. The expansion of the Hapag-Lloyd Cruises brand will be at the core of this strategy. The former TUI Group subsidiary will be integrated into the TUI Cruises joint venture, a successful structure having been established by TUI and Royal Caribbean since 2008.

A contract signed in Hamburg today values Hapag-Lloyd Cruises at 1.2 billion euros. The closing of the transaction is expected for this summer. Under the joint venture profit-sharing agreement TUI will report 50 percent of Hapag-Lloyd Cruises’ earnings. With the transaction, TUI and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. have agreed to further expand their partnership by using the proven joint venture structure of TUI Cruises also for the luxury and expedition cruise segment. The transaction is in line with TUI’s previously stated objective to deliver additional profitable growth at a lower level of capital intensity.

TUI Group’s plans for the expansion of the Cruises segment will be expedited by the transaction. As a result of limited global shipbuilding capacity, TUI Cruises’ Mein Schiff fleet are not scheduled for the next three new build deliveries until 2023, 2024 and 2026.

The integration of Hapag-Lloyd Cruises in the joint venture will allow TUI to participate in global cruise industry growth at a low level of capital expenditure.

The merger of TUI Cruises and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises under the umbrella of the joint venture will create a leading European cruise company with a current combined fleet of twelve ships. TUI Cruises and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises will continue to operate their successful product concepts in the future. TUI Cruises will continue to cater to the premium German-speaking segment and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises will continue to have an exclusive presence in the luxury and expedition ship segment. “The ships’ identities, service, quality and customer experience will remain as individual and unique as they are today. This will create significant advantages for the Group, for our expansion and for our investments,” explained TUI CEO Fritz Joussen.

Hapag-Lloyd Cruises is part of the TUI Group’s cruise businesses and is the leading provider of luxury and expedition cruises in German-speaking markets. Its fleet currently consists of two luxury ships within the five star plus category and three expedition cruise ships. A further expedition cruise ship has been ordered and will be added to Hapag-Lloyd Cruises’ fleet in 2021 to replace MS Bremen. In light of the transaction it is possible that the luxury and expedition fleet will grow in the coming years.

“Products and brands such as MS Europa and MS Europa 2 have international potential and appeal. Going forward, this will enable us as shareholders to take a capital-light approach to financing the ships and international growth within a joint venture framework. TUI and Royal Caribbean Cruises have developed the joint venture company on the basis of a strong partnership over the past ten years. The expansion decision is the next big step of growth for us – from a strategic and a commercial perspective,” said Fritz Joussen. Each partner will continue to leverage its core strengths: TUI’s strong brand and selling power combined with Royal Caribbean’s shipbuilding, operational and digital expertise.

TUI Group will use the transaction proceeds to strengthen the Group’s balance sheet and to drive its transformation into a digital organisation. The first stage of the transformation, which began in 2013, saw the company evolve from a traditional tour operator model into a successful developer, investor and operator of hotels and cruise ships, as well as destination activity provider. Now the next phase – TUI’s transformation to a digital platform organisation – has begun. Digital business models, as well as the Hotels, Resorts and Cruises divisions, will be the TUI Group’s mainstays in the future. However, growth and investments in hotels and cruise business will be less capital intensive. This ‘asset light’ strategy was announced in December 2019. Asset light expansion has already been adopted for hotel investments such as the brand TUI Blue and now also for the cruise brands.

New cases of Coronavirus on Diamond Princess

Details: Written by Teijo Niemelä Teijo Niemelä; Category: Top Headlines Top Headlines; Published: 07 February 2020 07 February 2020

Princess Cruises has been notified by the Japanese Ministry of Health that an additional 41 people from the targeted screening samples onboard Diamond Princess have tested positive for Coronavirus.

Further information on nationalities of these new cases will be forth coming.

"We expect that local public health authorities will be disembarking these guests today for transport to local hospitals immediately," Princess said in a statement.

World Dream quarantined in Hong Kong

Details: Written by Teijo Niemelä Teijo Niemelä; Category: Top Headlines Top Headlines; Published: 05 February 2020 05 February 2020

The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health (DH) today (February 5) said that subsequent to the notification of confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection involving eight travellers from the Mainland who took the World Dream cruise from January 19 to 24, the CHP's Port Health Division is sparing no effort in carrying out the port health inspection work on the cruise.

Personnel of the Port Health Division have been assessing the health condition of over 1 800 passengers and over 1 800 crew members on board through health declaration and temperature checking. As of 9pm, 33 crew members of the cruise claimed to have developed upper respiratory tract infection symptoms. Among them, three crew members reported to have developed fever were sent to hospital for isolation and management.

Samples were collected from all crew members reported to have symptoms for testing on novel coronavirus. Currently, relevant test results showed that the respiratory samples of 32 crew members concerned were tested negative for novel coronavirus while that of the remaining one is pending.

The CHP said that relevant health inspection work is ongoing due to the large number of people on board. All passengers and crew members are required to stay on board prior to completion of the health inspection and permission by the DH.

RCCL launches five year programme to boost earnings and cut emissions

Details: Written by Kari Reinikainen Kari Reinikainen; Category: Top Headlines Top Headlines; Published: 04 February 2020 04 February 2020

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd (RCCL), the world’s second largest cruise shipping group, has introduced its 20>25 by 2025 program which is designed to give people throughout the company specific goals to work towards.

“The program includes several goals by 2025: delivering $20.00 adjusted earnings per share (EPS); further reducing the company's carbon footprint by 25%; delivering strong returns on invested capital; and continuing to improve on record guest satisfaction and employee engagement metrics,” the company said in a statement.

For 2019, the adjusted EPS amounted to $9.56.

“These goals have been put in place to focus our leadership on achieving outsized improvements in our performance going forward. We believe that what gets measured gets better and - just like the Double-Double program - we believe that this 20>25 by 2025 program will help focus our people on the key success factors for our future. This program not only focuses on earnings and carbon footprint, it will also focus on further improving our guest satisfaction and employee engagement while continuing to deliver strong returns on invested capital,” RCCL said.

"We are pairing ambitious business and environmental goals because we all understand that businesses must do our part to meet the needs of all our stakeholders," said Richard D. Fain, chairman and CEO. "Over the last years, our people have worked hard to deliver strong performance on both profitability metrics and important societal goals. This 20>25 by 2025 program should help take those efforts to the next level."