Royal Caribbean Cruises – “Royal Caribbean is a GREAT place to start your hospitaliy career!”

Pros

The lower-level employees have a true passion for the brands and guests. They also maintain an attitude that is conducive to a company that sells fantastic vacations. Their bosses are also very positive and excited about their jobs. This company is a GREAT place to start your hospitality career!!!

Cons

RCCL pays at the 25th percentile so don't expect to earn enough money to live a robust life, especially in Miami. The executives and their direct reports have effectively avoided accountability for several years. For example, the former CFO helped the company iron out debt to equity concerns and the company's bond rating climbed to a respectable level. However, Richard Fain seems to be competing with Arison from Carnival and he is willing to take the entire company down with him in order to do it. They planned and ordered several new ships at a time when the US dollar is in serious decline and fuel prices are surging. This effectively killed the company's bond rating (junk bond status again). Also, the Directors and above are VERY political and seem to be unwilling to do two fundamental things: create a near-term strategy and plan that they could be held accountable for and deliver accurate and honest reports up the food chain where troubles exist, which hides incompetence. The information squelching-leaders also railroad senior analysts and mid-management that identify and start to resolve serious problems. I believe that it has as much to do with incompetence on the part of senior management that have relied exclusively on political savvy and coattails as it does on their desire to hide any warts in their operations. For the lower-level employees, the main downside is the employee cruise request process. The process is officially based on seniority, which new employees do not have, so outside of your FAM cruise after a year of service don't expect to cruise unless you pay for it under the table.

Advice to Senior Management

Create a company wiki and encourage open and honest dialogue about every opportunity to improve RCCL. Require every person that submits a challenge to also submit at least one idea for how to improve that issue before the posting goes live. Recognize and reward employees that contribute AND do not headhunt people that expose fundamental problems, especially concerns about leadership.
Build a real leadership development program that is open to all employees that want to climb the leadership ladder. The current BOT process is pure politics and is not respected by most mid-level leaders (mgr and director). If you want to have a strong group of leaders for your future, identify what you need and encourage employees to develop the skills required to meet those needs. You have a lot of hidden gems in the ranks who you could retain by providing such an opportunity. As it stands now, you are actually losing a lot of great leaders because they CAN go somewhere else and get a promotion. That leaves you with the people who cannot leave because they are not talented enough to work elsewhere. In some areas of the company the RIF was a failure because the lowest performers were not let go, the most threatening future leaders were... Kill those politics!!!
Create complete transparency in the benefits and rewards areas by putting employee cruise requests and award nominations online for all to see and read in real time. Also, base the rewards on actual performance results as measured against pre-defined objectives. There is no corporate strategy shared with the entire company to inspire us to action through the coming year. Therefore, there are no functional/departmental strategies or measurable objectives cascaded to my area. Therefore, my team does not have any measurable goals. Therefore, my annual review is always a surprise because I don't know what I will be measured on, even if I directly ask at the beginning of the year. So, how can I prove that I am exceptional and exceeding my performance objectives?
Get Internal Audit involved in the employee hotline. My peers have criticized things such as the employee cruise request process, but those complaints go straight to HR, which owns employee cruise requests. Clearly, you don't want the fox in charge of the henhouse...