Arnold Donald's time as Carnival CEO: Navigating turnarounds and the pandemic: Travel Weekly

Table Of Content

• Ships
• Carnival Cruise Line President Christine Duffy Honored with CLIA's Lifetime Achievement Award
• Azamara Cruises Launches 2025 & 2026 Voyages
• Princess Cruises Rolls Out Fleetwide Dining Revolution
• Exclusive: Carnival Corp. CEO shares thoughts on the future of cruising
• Holland America Line Enhances Entertainment Offerings

A staunch supporter of diversity in corporate boardrooms, the New Orleans native currently serves on the board of Bank of America and served on Carnival’s board for more than a decade. Donald, the former president and CEO of The Executive Leadership Council, has been at the forefront of significantly increasing the numbers of black chief executives at publicly traded corporations. He joined Carnival in 2018 and brings a strong track record of communications leadership across the travel industry. At Carnival, he manages the team responsible for public/media relations, events, employee and shipboard communications, guest communications, the Care Team and the post-cruise guest care contact center. Some cruise lines in recent weeks have unveiled plans for new onboard policies designed to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Ships

Donald will be succeeded by Josh Weinstein, Carnival Corp.'s COO, and will become vice chair of the company's board. Donald also points to the way the industry came together to address keeping guests, crew and people in ports safe and healthy as something he believes will last. Within Carnival Corp., meetings across brands happened regularly, as everyone aimed for the goal of a return. At the time of Seatrade's annual conference in the fall 2021, Carnival ships were slowly getting back to sea after a 15-month suspension. "We know where the road is headed, and the road is headed toward a very bright future," Donald said during a panel discussion at the event.

Carnival Cruise Line President Christine Duffy Honored with CLIA's Lifetime Achievement Award

In 2001, Carnival transferred their first new build, the 1982 built Tropicale to Costa Cruises. Through the rest of the decade, the line would continue to sell, or transfer the other 1980s built ships to other lines, with the Jubilee in 2004, Celebration in 2008, and Holiday in 2009. At 101,000 GT , it became the largest passenger ship in the world at the time and first to exceed 100,000 tons.

Azamara Cruises Launches 2025 & 2026 Voyages

Weinstein notes that's because cruises tend to be perceived as value options in the travel space. And in doing so, they sometimes end up switching from a land-based trip to a cruise. It’s been difficult for Donald to steer Carnival away from the financial Covid headwinds. The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) group, which includes cruise giants Princess, Carnival, and Royal Caribbean cruise lines, estimates that the suspension of cruises during the pandemic snuffed out more than $25 billion in economic activity. CultureBanx note that now as the cruise giant gradually restarts operations after a long pandemic-led hiatus it has to navigate new issues including a surge in fuel prices.

Weinstein also points to strong pent-up demand for vacations in the wake of the pandemic lockdowns and also the boost in demand that cruise companies should get from the relaxation of COVID-19-related vaccine and testing rules for cruising that is starting to occur. As long as the company delivers on providing that happiness to customers that is his focus, the good times will return, and the company can start paying down the high levels of debt, he suggests. Investors on Wall Street are clearly worried about the company's future, as can be seen in the 58% plunge in the company's stock price this year. The stock is now trading below $10 a share, down nearly 90% from highs set four years ago and significantly below the level where it was trading when Donald took over as CEO nine years ago. As a result, Carnival Corporation has continued to lose massive amounts of money in recent quarters — $1.83 billion in just the three months ending May 31, a magnitude of quarterly loss that once was unthinkable for the company. To that point, Weinstein says his job in the coming years won't be to tell each individual brand what to do.

Carnival to add new Excel-class cruise ship in 2027, following Jubilee - Axios

Carnival to add new Excel-class cruise ship in 2027, following Jubilee.

Posted: Tue, 13 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

In recent months, TPG has been flooded with complaints from cruisers about the time it's taking for cruise lines to issue refunds for canceled cruises. Some readers say they've been waiting months to get money back for trips that were canceled way back in March or April. In addition, cruise ships on order will be delayed, if only because the shipyards where they are being built have experienced shutdowns in recent months, as have their suppliers. The CDC has issued a no-sail order for cruise ships operating in U.S. waters that is scheduled to expire on July 24 but could be extended.

Donald, who will take on the role of vice chair at Carnival Corp., sat down with Cruise Critic for an exclusive interview about his time with Carnival, what's next for him and what we should expect for the future of the industry. Carnival Panorama, another sister to Carnival Vista, entered service as the cruise line's flagship on December 11, 2019. She became the first new ship to homeport on the West Coast since Paradise (now Carnival Paradise) in 1998. "Our ability to, over time, rebuild the balance sheet, get back to that fortress [balance sheet], that's the path that we want to get on," he says. "I think we can do that in a way that still allows us to grow and to order more ships over time. I don't look at them as mutually exclusive. But we absolutely have a priority that we're going to use our cash to ... reduce financial leverage." Weinstein suggests it's a challenge to build a day-to-day business model that factors in the possibility of another pandemic that would have the worldwide effects of the COVID-19 outbreak, or a similar phenomenon that would shut down cruising for months on end.

Holland America Line Enhances Entertainment Offerings

It's a philosophy that began forming in Weinstein's mind soon after he joined Carnival Corporation two decades ago as a corporate lawyer, having worked for one of the top New York law firms specializing in mergers and acquisitions. But soon he was heading to ships regularly — not just for work but increasingly for fun. Weinstein, his wife and his three children became cruising enthusiasts early on in his tenure at Carnival Corporation and made it a regular thing. There's a lot to do on the financial front to right the ship that is Carnival Corporation in the coming years.

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After that he's hoping to have a bit more "me time" which he said he plans to fill with commitments to several external boards throwing out several names including The National WWII Museum and Bank of America, among others. Donald wanted to bring the company's various brands together to behave like a federation – to share practices and strengthen the company as a whole. Carnival Corp. is the parent company of flagship Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Seabourn, P&O Cruises, Costa Cruises, AIDA Cruises and Cunard. Donald told USA TODAY the decision came as part of an ongoing planning and leadership development process at the company. "And so that real-time collaboration, communication, I think, has been enhanced dramatically."

Despite the company’s large size, TIAA was included on a Fortune service companies list, separate from the main Fortune 500 list at the time. "His leadership has been instrumental in helping the Carnival Corp. brands, those who work in the industry and especially travel advisors to stay afloat during the pandemic," said Fee. "We know in his new role ... he will continue to support travel advisors and their contributions to this great industry." "If you look at the leadership team in the management team, how we work together, that has dramatically changed," he said. "The brands have extensive communication, collaboration and coordination, and they didn't have it before from a diversity standpoint. The majority of our fleet now, a commercially is led by women." Donald, who started in the role in 2013 and led Carnival through the COVID-19 pandemic, will be succeeded by Josh Weinstein, who previously served the company as its chief operations officer.

Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, which dropped Carnival’s revenue to near zero for a few weeks, the cruise line had hit record profits of $3 billion in 2019. He is also widely acknowledged for having changed the culture at the world's largest cruise company for the better. During his tenure, Donald led Carnival Corp. through the COVID-19 – and he said there actually has been some positive outcome of the pandemic that shut the cruise industry down for more than a year. He was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Carnival Corporation & plc from July 2013 to August 2022, when he became vice-chairman. "We have all the data in the world that show that incidents of COVID on cruise ships ended up being far less than what you saw on land."

The former chairman of Merisant and a longtime executive with Monsanto places a high value on building community and communities. New data from the Cruise Lines International Association trade group also shows that the desire to cruise now exceeds pre-pandemic levels. The leadership changes at both Carnival and Royal Caribbean will see a new guard step in to navigate the cruise giants through their next stages of recovery. At Royal Caribbean, former CFO Jason Liberty, 46, stepped into the top job at the beginning of year. On July 31, 2021, after numerous delays, the highly anticipated Mardi Gras entered service, sailing year round from Port Canaveral. "Did anybody predict a pandemic? Did we build that into the models? Yeah, we've looked at that in the past as (a possible) 'black swan' event, along with other 'black swan' events," he says.

While we don’t cover all available credit cards, our editorial team creates and maintains all of the analysis of these cards, and our content is not influenced nor subject to review by any credit card company, bank or partner prior to (or after) publication. Please view our advertising policy and product review methodology for more information. "We methodically went after it, and ... I know in a number of cases, we are caught up, and in other cases we're catching up," he said. "We are committed to getting people who want refunds their money back, and we are committed to ensure that the people who choose future cruise credits are clear that they have it and that we can facilitate them rebooking."

Weinstein is quick to point out that the "happiness" that he envisions each of the brands providing their customers will come in different forms. It's a transition that is unlikely to bring major changes to the way the company operates — at least at first. Weinstein tells TPG that he is "on a bit of an exploration path" of understanding the company's various divisions and how they're delivering on the promise of happiness that he talks about — each in their own way. The BLACK ENTERPRISE Black Men Excel Summit is the nation’s No. 1 conference focused on celebrating and refining Black men with the tools necessary to advance their professional development from entry-level management to C-suite executive. Josh Weinstein has assumed the role of President and CEO of Carnival Corporation & plc.