Royal Caribbean has rolled out its new advertising message, dubbed "Designed for Wow" in television commercials that began airing on January 7th.

This new marketing campaign follows last year's "The Sea is Calling" theme.

Royal Caribbean Executive Vice President of Marketing, Lisa Bauer, says the new commercials are based on market research.  She also said the "shell phone" that was a major part of last year's commercials will not return for this year's ads.

The 30-second commercials show various activities unique to Royal Caribbean ships, combined with reaction shots from passengers.

Featured are the zipline and Aqua Theater from the Oasis-class ships, but also the Flow Rider surfing experience and ice skating rinks found on older ships.  

Royal Caribbean was named Best Cruise Company by Norwegian's travel industry competition known as the Grand Travel Awards.  This award is the 18th consecutive time Royal Caribbean has won the award.

The award ceremony was held at the annual Grand Travel Awards at the Radisson BLU Scandinavia Hotel, where Royal Caribbean Generam Manager of Nordic Countries Roar Meidal accepted the award.

"We are very grateful to have received this award enough away. The fact that travel agents have voted us back to the best cruise company gives us the motivation to continue to offer the best cruise experiences.  We had not done it alone."

Meidal believes that the award has to be shared by both passengers and travel agents.

"We see that more and more people get their eyes opened to cruise as a holiday form. It is clear that the combination of relaxation, activity and adventure tempts many. Now we plan to take the prize home two more times, so that we can write us 20 straight victories."

Royal Caribbean has agreed to extend its satellite TV channel contract with Oceans TV for two of its cruise ships.

The first agreement extends the service for Serenade of the Seas while it cruises in Europe and the Middle East in Winter and Spring 2013. This will provide channels such as BBC World News, BBC Entertainment and CNBC Europe for English speaking passengers. Passengers from Italy can watch Rai News, Rai 1 and Mediaset Italia; TF1 and AB1 are available for French passengers while TVE Internacional and RTL Schweiz can be viewed by Spanish and German speakers respectively.

The second agreement Royal Caribbean extended its satellite TV channels for Splendour of the Seas.  As Splendour cruises the waters of South America, it will provide Brazil's largest commercial television network which is watched by an estimated 120 million people daily across Latin America.

As well as satellite TV channels, Oceans TV supplies cruise lines with live events, international movies, promotional videos, safety films and portable entertainment systems such as the iPad and Sony PSP.  

At the 6th Annual Leisure Travel Leaders Awards, Royal Caribbean won two big awards for the cruise line.

Royal Caribbean won "Best Cruise Line Overall" and "Best Contemporary (Mass-Market) Line.

Leisure Travel Leaders awards are based on a survey sent to the more than 20,000 home-based travel agent readers of Agent@Home magazine, the more than 29,000 leisure-selling travel agent readers of Vacation Agent magazine, and the 65,000-plus travel agent readers of Travel Pulse Dailon TravelPulse.com. 

O3b Networks announced that it has signed a second mult-year deal with Royal Carinbbean to bring high-speed satellite internet service to another of it's ships, this time Allure of the Seas.  

The agreement will provide guests and crew aboard Allure of the Seas with internet service that is anticipated to be four times more responsive than existing and planned GEO satellite systems.

Royal Caribbean and O3b signed a deal last summer to provide O3b’s new maritime offering O3bMaritime aboard Oasis of the Seas.  

Royal Caribbean Chief Information Officer Bill Martin commented on the agreement, "Cruise ship guests expect the same quality voice and Internet services they experience on land. We are proud to be the first cruise line to offer guests and crew aboard our innovative Oasis class of ships connectivity services that are in a league of their own. This latest agreement underlines our confidence in O3b Networks and the game-changing level of connectivity it is set to provide aboard our ships.”

O3b describes their internet service as "fiber-like speeds at sea".

Royal Caribbean is discussing with city officials of Tianjin, China to possibly open a new cruise talent training center in the port city.

Royal Caribbean plans to set up a Chinese cruise talent base at Tianjin Maritime College, which will be capable of training up to 100 students a month, according to Tianjin Daily newspaper.

Microsoft cited an interesting case study that highlights how Microsoft's software has helped other companies in their business operation.  In the case of Royal Caribbean, Microsoft posted how their software has assisted in point-of-sales and food-safety inspections.

Microsoft's software has helped the cruise line improve profitability and cut its operating costs. This is accomplished by reducing food-inspection time from five to two hours as well as improving workflow throughout the ships.

Royal Caribbean began development of a new software solution when it was building its Oasis-class ships in an effort to improve the systems with a few key goals: improve the systems that support customer service, improve workflow, improve food safety and speed passenger payment transactions.

Microsoft's solution was to implement 35 handheld devices on Royal Caribbean's ships to monitor food and cooler temperatures and deploy an integrated POS solution based on Windows Embedded Compact, Windows Embedded POSReady, Windows 7, Windows Server and Windows Mobile.

Microsoft claims its solutions for Royal Caribbean are

• Automatic alerts for cooler malfunction
• Reduced time to generate temperature compliance reports
• 60% reduction in time to complete temperature checks
• Seamless integration of POS, digital signage, interactive TV and photo gallery
   

You may have heard of a new marketing term called PANK, which stands for "professional aunt, no kids".  It's a new term for single working women that are embracing their career and don't have any kids of their own, but enjoy spoiling their nieces and nephews.

A survey by KRC Research shows that 23 million American women are PANKs and will spend about $9 billion a year on nieces, nephews and other children with whom they have a special bond. For Royal Caribbean, this is an area the company has already identified as part of their overall strategy to bring families to their ships.

Royal Caribbean executive vice president for global sales and marketing, Lisa Bauer, is a PANK and knows the value this demographic has for the cruise line, "When targeting women with family themes, you don't have to be that granular if the marketing is good."

Bauer says the KRC study "reaffirmed" how Royal Caribbean markets their cruises to families in that there are many forms of what a family is these days.  As a result, she said, the cruise line, "always a family brand," has recently adopted an advertising template that, when featuring women with children, doesn't call the woman Mom. Each person who sees the ad determines the woman's connection to the children, Bauer said.

Bauer points out that her own family is an example of that because members of her family travel in different groupings, and "that's how families act." It's not just two parents and two children.

We're very excited to kick off our first video blog episode that will take you through planning a Royal Caribbean cruise.  This new video series will take you from start to finish how we're planning our upcoming cruise aboard Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas that is sailing an eastern Caribbean itinerary. 

Let us know how you liked the video and any suggestions you have for our cruise!

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