For many, a vacation on a cruise ship brings up images of retirees basking in the sun or playing bingo. Royal Caribbean wants to change that with a brand new ship.
The new “Symphony of The Seas”, which cost $1.5 billion to build, is outfitted with everything from ice skating rinks to water slides to zip lines, Michael Bayley, the company’s President and CEO, told Cheddar Wednesday. It’s scheduled for its maiden voyage in the next few weeks.
“A lot of people have a stereotypical perspective of cruising,” said Bayley. But the company is offering “experiences, features that we think are really attractive to millennials. [And] we have short products, short breaks.”
Royal Caribbean’s stock has outperformed rivals such as Carnival and Norwegian Cruise Lines over the past year, but did see a pullback in December after [two](http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/royal-caribbean-cruise-passengers-gastro-intestinal-illness-sickness-bug-norovirus-ovation-of-the-a8095611.html) [separate](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/12/17/hundreds-get-sick-royal-caribbean-cruise-again/959102001/) instances of passengers getting sick. The company, though, still reported better-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter.
The cruise line has focused marketing efforts on digital communications to capture the attention of tech-savvy millennials.
“We’ve moved pretty much all of our marketing, advertising from traditional to digital,” explained Bayley.
“We’ve been quite focused on attracting new-to-cruise [passengers] through our communication and through the way we present our product and the experiences that you can have,” he said.
“A lot of that is built on demolishing these perceptions that...it’s going to be really just for older people and there’s really nothing to do, which is so far from the truth.”
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/royal-caribbean-gets-ready-to-launch-the-worlds-largest-cruise-ship).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
