Q&A: Carnival Cruise Line president Christine Duffy

Christine Duffy has spent her entire career in travel, starting at an agency and then becoming the president and CEO of Maritz Travel. In 2011 she became president of Cruise Lines International Association and four years later became the president of one of the sector's largest brands, Carnival Cruise Line, where she remains a decade later.

Carnival Cruise Line, one of several cruise brands within Carnival Corporation, operates from 14 ports in the United States and two in Australia, with 26 ships and more than 40,000 employees.

We talked to Duffy at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit (ALIS) produced by the BHN Group - another brand of Northstar Travel Group. Duffy was at the event as a panelist in a session on “The State of the Travel Industry” and later sat down for a one-on-one discussion focused on how the cruise line is using technology, the balance of high-tech and high-touch and the brand’s widely successful TikTok campaign.

The conversation has been edited for brevity. 

Carnival Cruise Line uses facial recognition technology at some of your U.S. ports. Tell us more about that and the effectiveness?

I think we were the first cruise line to actually pilot that, and we’ve recently expanded it. It’s a program with United States Customs and Border Protection, and it really helps to make the whole debarkation process as people come off ships and go through customs much, much faster. We’ve seen the improvement in comments in surveys – “faster, smooth less hassle.” And right now we are using it in nine of our 14 U.S. home ports, but it will continue to be expanded. And it has a 99% accuracy on guest identity. The match done is done usually within 1.2 to 2 seconds, so it is really effective. And for guests that aren’t comfortable – there are some people that don’t want to use it - they can opt out. 

Carnival created its app, known as the HUB app, in 2015. How important is that to the experience and what are some of the new ways you are using it?

We’ve had the HUB app now probably eight years and it’s been downloaded 10 million times – so it’s definitely one of the more popular cruise apps. And 90% of people in a cabin download the app. … You can book your shore excursion, you can book your spa treatments, you’re able to order food and have it delivered [to your location].

One of the things we’ve most recently launched is improved debarkation process, which is always a bit of a hassle. Now using the app you can schedule within a window of time of when you want to debark. And then you can request the tags if you are going to be checking your luggage.

Basically all of the activities - the entertainment, the schedules - all go through the HUB app. You can sign up for chat – if you are traveling with a group … to be able to just chat amongst yourselves so you know where people are and are able to meet up. When I started cruising back in the ‘80s we used to get walkie-talkies! 

Connectivity on cruise ships used to be a big issue. In December 2022 you began using SpaceX Starlink to provide high-speed internet on your ships. Has that helped?

Yes, we’ve really seen a massive improvement, increased connectivity across the entire fleet. We did a major fleet upgrade and now that’s complete and so that enables a lot more. And that’s really important for our guests but also for our crew members because that’s really how they are able to stay in touch with family back home.

The topic of consumer-facing technology in the travel industry often leads to a debate of high-tech versus high-touch. What’s your take on that in regard to cruise?

There’s so much high touch on a cruise ship. On a cruise ship, unlike in a hotel, when you go in the dining room people get to know who the servers are and they know you, they know what you like. The same thing at the bar. So it’s a shared experience. I think where we are removing the friction is if I booked brunch, which I can do through HUB app, I’ll get a message to say your table is ready. So I’m not standing outside the dining room in line waiting. The technology makes it easier, more efficient, reducing lines and reducing crowding wherever possible.

The use of the app is up I think 20% since 2020. I think the reality for the Generation X and millennial is they would prefer not to talk to a human for some of these interactions. They would rather use the app and get things done that way, and I think we’re just going to see more of that. Now when there’s a complex issue or a problem, that’s when you need human intervention. 

Let’s talk about generative artificial intelligence. How are you using it and what are you thoughts about its use in the future?

Right now we’re engaged with Microsoft Copilot – it’s an early adoption program so we have about 400 of our shoreside team members that are using this AI-powered tool. If you are in a meeting … it will take what it hears and summarize notes. If people are writing something and want some research, they can get that easily. We’ve seen cases where you clearly can tell if someone has just used AI to write something. So it’s still early days. 

And how else will this will be used? I think contact centers [are] obviously a big place. … We already today have enabled people if you want to make a change in your booking – to change a passenger name – we are providing more and more self-service. Not only because it’s more efficient for us, but because people would rather be able to do it themselves and not be on hold and wait for a customer service agent and have to talk to someone. 

Through your app, you are collecting a lot of data about your passengers. How are you able to use that?

As an example, we were piloting new menus in the main dining room … and get immediate feedback using data we get from guests. And we were able to say, “We don’t need to keep piloting, we just need to roll this out across the fleet.” So I think the decision-making is much faster, it’s more targeted. Because we can see if there is a certain demographic that is leaning into something versus another demographic. 

And then how do you plan. Especially when you are thinking about ship design in the future or refurbishment of ships. We have more casino guests on our ships. People really love to play slot machines. So being able to use data to see how people are using the ship, how they disperse, what times are the busiest times at the guest service desk so you can staff better and be more efficient. Same thing with bar. Years ago you would be assigned as a bartender to work at the bar. Now we can see how the traffic flow is so bartenders will move where the crowds are going to provide more service.

Let’s talk about marketing – how are you bringing in new customers?

A lot of it is where are the new customers that are likely to cruise? How are they engaging with media? So clearly for a brand like Carnival, which is all about fun and high energy and a lot going on on the ship  – we’re advertising with the NFL, sports, NBA, any big cultural moments like the Grammys, the Emmys. We’re advertising in movie theaters. You are really identifying the psychographic of the people and then thinking about where are they and how are they engaging with media and making sure we are in that stream.

We were the first cruise line to advertise on Amazon Prime Thursday Night Football last season and that’s been a big boon. We are obviously in flow with Hulu, Roku – all these streaming services. It’s not the same traditional media that used to exist. We did something with TikTok called with the “Retirement House” – a “granfluencer” [retiree-focused] group. It was a content series that included Gronk [retired NFL player Rob Gronkowski]. … That campaign generated 9 million views and surpassed all the benchmarks that we had and a positive social sentiment of 100% across multiple channels. 

And tell us about your distribution and booking channels?

A lot come through Carnival.com. A lot come through our trade channels. We have technology we call GoCCL which is an enablement for travel advisors to be able to book Carnival in our systems. We also have our own direct sales force. To me, all channels are open. It’s really up to the guest to decide how they want to book. But we do find with people that are more experienced cruisers – if they are taking a cruise in the Caribbean and they’ve done this before – it’s just faster and easier, a lot of them will go and book on Carnival.com. Or if they have a travel advisor they work with that keeps in touch with them, they’ll say book this and somebody else handles it.

As you consider where to make updates and how to use technology, how do you prioritize investments of time and money?

There was a lot of technology investment made during COVID. People had to prove they were vaccinated. So that sort of jumped the line over other things we had been working on. But this debarkation solution -  we know where points of pain are based on survey data we get from guests at the end of the cruise so that was prioritized over other things we could have been developing. 

The main thing [next] is using … technology, these packages, bundling of on-board experiences people can purchase. We’re also going to be opening our new exclusive destination Celebration Key in the Bahamas so we are working on how we enable the technology in the destination. So people can use their “sign and sail” card and people will be able to purchase packages when they get onto the destination.

Finally, you've been in this industry more than four decades. What advice do you have for young people today about working in travel? 

I think the travel industry is often a forgotten industry for people who go to school. Nobody tells their kid, “Why don’t you be in the travel industry?” But the reality when you think about jobs today in the travel industry, you think about the size of the industry, when you consider all the different segments – you can be in the airlines, you can work for hotels, you can work for a cruise line, you can work for agencies that support travel, you can work for technology companies that supports the travel industry. I’ve always said everybody loves to travel. It’s vibrant, it’s growing. No day is ever the same.