Carnival Cruise Lines

Chapter 8

Case Study: Carnival Cruise Lines

1. Carnival Cruise Line is at the top when it comes to the Cruise Industry. What see from Carnival Cruise, they generate more money then any other brand, they have the highest roe then any other company, and they still use travel agents to get the job done. They aimed with the goal to make cruises fun for all ages, male or female. The company always had a successfully planed their expansions in the cruise industry. They were successful at expansion because they focused on the first time traveler, rather then the repeat customer. Even though they barely reached out to these repeat customers they were able to build up quite a large database of names of people who had used one of the Carnival Cruise Lines. Another key factor for them is they clear and decisive vision. They always knew what the goal was, they always created great strategies and plans, and their execution was spot on. As stated early they wanted to create what was known as the fun ship.  So what they did was design ships with what are considered fun activities. What worked for them were low investments into the technical part of the business as well as not focusing on having a strong CRM.
2. Carnival Cruise line has been very successful with their current business model, but I think for them to continue to stay on top and grow the business as well they will need to implement a CRM. The CRM strategy will help Carnival Cruise line better understand their customers and what there needs maybe. It can assistant in attracting new customers to the company as well as bringing in repeat customers. They should implement the rewards, loyalty program as well. Carnival Cruise line also has a very strong, complex revenue management group for a long time, which uses inventory, booking and pricing data to match each cruise as well as understand the performance of their booking agents.
3. They are several situations that we must first address before Carnival Cruise Line can implement their CRM system. Carnival Cruise line currently only has a small portion of their staff that is currently working on data analysis. What they should do is hire a group of consultants or maybe more staff whose responsibilities are to implement the CRM tools and to implement them. Also since Carnival Cruise line has built up this database of first time customers, but most important should to verify theses people in the database, make sure the information is relevant and accurate. Carnival Cruise line needs to build and implement a new IT infrastructure and then use it to implement the CRM.
4. Carnival Cruise line should use there well defined customer profile system; they should use the new data analysis tools to help determine what the correct course of action is to improve. They should match of the actives on the ship based on the average age of the travelers, their martial status, the amount of disposable income they have, maybe what extras they are looking for on the trip. Another key leverage tool would be to use customer feedback, use the previous results to help improve the futre.