Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines 2012 Annual Report Download - page 18

14
PART I
• maintain strong relationships with travel agencies,
which continue to be the principal industry distri-
bution channel, while enhancing our consumer
outreach programs.
Safety, Environment and Health Policies
We are committed to protecting the safety, environ-
ment and health of our guests, employees and others
working on our behalf. We are also committed to
protecting the marine environment in which our ships
sail and the communities in which we operate by
reducing/mitigating adverse environmental conse-
quences and using resources efficiently. As part
of this commitment, we have established a Safety,
Environment and Health Department to oversee
our maritime safety, global security, environmental
stewardship and medical/public health activities. We
also have a Maritime Advisory Board of experts as
well as the Safety, Environment and Health (SEH)
Committee of our Board of Directors which oversees
these important areas. In addition, we publish an
annual Stewardship Report on our performance in
these important areas, which can be accessed on our
brand websites.
Following the Costa Concordia incident in early 2012,
we and other cruise lines performed reviews of safety
and emergency response procedures to identify les-
sons learned and best practices to further protect the
safety of our guests and crew. During this process, we
held regular meetings with other cruise companies to
propose new industry-wide policies that we believe
will further drive our Company’s and the industry’s
safety performance. A number of these policies have
already been implemented and/or publicly announced
by the Cruise Lines International Association as well
as shared with international regulators.
Strengthen and Support Our Human Capital
We believe that our employees, both shipboard and
shoreside, are a critical success factor for our busi-
ness. We strive to identify, hire, develop, motivate,
and retain the best employees, with backgrounds and
perspectives as diverse as our guest base. Attracting,
engaging, and retaining key employees has been and
will remain critical to our success.
We continue our focus on providing our employees
with a competitive compensation structure, develop-
ment and other personal and professional growth
opportunities in order to strengthen and support our
human capital. We also seek to select, develop and
retain leaders to advance the enterprise now and in
the future. To that end, we pay special attention to
identifying high performing potential leaders and
develop deep bench strength so these leaders can
assume leadership roles throughout the organization.
We strive to maintain a work environment that rein-
forces collaboration, motivation and innovation, and
believe that maintaining our vibrant and distinctive
culture is critical to the growth of our business.
Strengthen Our Consumer Engagement
We place a strong focus on identifying the needs of
our guests and creating product features that our
customers value. We are focused on targeting high
value guests by better understanding consumer data
and insights and creating communication strategies
that best resonate with our target audiences.
We interact with customers across all touch points and
seek to identify underlying needs for which guests are
willing to pay a premium. We rely on various programs
prior to, during and after a cruise vacation aimed at
increasing our ticket prices, onboard revenues and
occupancy. In 2013, we will continue to strategically
invest in a number of potential revenue enhancing
projects, including the implementation of new onboard
revenue initiatives. We believe these initiatives will
provide opportunities for increased ticket and onboard
revenues.
Global Awareness and Market Penetration
We increase brand awareness and market penetra-
tion of our cruise brands in various ways, including by
using communication strategies and marketing cam-
paigns designed to emphasize the unique qualities
of each brand and to broaden the awareness of the
brand, especially among the brand target customer
groups. Our marketing strategies include the use of
traditional media, social media, brand websites and
travel agencies. Our brands engage past and poten-
tial guests by collaborating with travel partners and
through call centers, international offices and interna-
tional representatives. In addition, Royal Caribbean
International, Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Club
Cruises retain repeat guests with exclusive benefits
offered through their respective loyalty programs.
We also increase brand awareness across all of our
brands through travel agencies who generate the
majority of our bookings. We are committed to fur-
ther developing and strengthening this very impor-
tant distribution channel by continuing to focus the
travel agents on the unique qualities of each of our
brands.
We sell and market our global brands, Royal Caribbean
International, Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Club
Cruises, to guests outside of North America through
our offices in the United Kingdom, France, Germany,
Norway, Italy, Spain, Singapore, China, Brazil, Australia
and Mexico. We believe that having a local presence
in these markets provides us with the ability to react
more quickly to local market conditions and better
understand our consumer base in each market. We
further extend our geographic reach with a network
of 36 independent international representatives