Like its peer sectors, the cruise industry is facing some level of transformation as artificial intelligence (AI) continues to rapidly evolve.
Jason Liberty, CEO of Royal Caribbean Group, parent to Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises, and with a stake in TUI Cruises, opened up about AI implementation at Royal Caribbean during an interview at Skift Global Forum last week.
Liberty shared that his company manages about 15 million price points daily, which used to be a task headed up by a couple of hundred revenue managers. But today, more than 90% of those price points are AI-driven.
And AI’s use goes further than price management.
“We've been able to reduce the waste on our ships by 50% by implementing AI and being able to predict how many hamburgers and other things that every 15 minutes we need to produce,” Liberty said.
He continued: “We have 180,000 passengers, as we speak right now, on our ships. So, just being able to manage it at a deeper level and more predictable level has huge savings.”
And its uses are not just back-office.
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Liberty said it is being implemented in “everything we do.”
“We have incredible use cases for it, commercially,” he said, referencing pricing, pricing personalization and communication with guests.
“We continue to tailor it,” Liberty said of Royal Caribbean’s AI usage. “I think what's most important is that it's done in a non creepy way. So we're not trying to get into your day-to-day habits and behaviors, but we want to be able to predict so that we can actually enhance the experience, take friction out of the experience.”
Liberty said he feels that Royal Caribbean Group is primed for disruptive technology because the company sits on “the Himalayas” of data.
And he is not the only cruise line executive to share about the sector’s AI use.
Carnival Cruise Line’s chief information officer (CIO) Sean Kenny told Fortune earlier this month that while the cruise line has piloted more than 100 generative AI projects, only six are in full production currently.
The brand’s AI strategy is different from its sibling lines under the Carnival Corporation umbrella that includes brands such as Princess Cruises and Holland America Line.
Among the projects underway are a tool that helps travel agents answer guest questions and a tool to help servers on ships recommend wine pairings.
Kenny told Fortune that the company has looked to tech incumbents such as Google and Microsoft as Carnival seeks to progress with AI but it is also looking at working with startups.
And cruisers were already picking up use as early as two years ago, according to a 2023 survey conducted by Oliver Wyman of approximately 1,100 leisure travelers in the U.S. and Canada which revealed that 56% of recent cruisers had used generative AI tools for travel planning.
Bottom line, change is coming for cruises with AI—and the industry currently has an eye on efficiency and improvement for the technology.