Carnivals CEO Arnold Donald Is Setting Sail By Stepping Down

Table Of Content

• Exclusive: A Time of Transition as Arnold Donald Prepares to Step Down as Carnival Corp. CEO
• Holland America Line Enhances Entertainment Offerings
• More From Travel Weekly
• Best Covid-19 Travel Insurance Plans
• Josh Weinstein takes over as CEO of Carnival Corporation
• Current fleet
• Former HGTV star slapped with $10 million fine and jail time for real estate fraud

Donald — who will become vice chair, effective Aug. 1 — took the helm as chief executive nine years ago, two of which were spent keeping Carnival afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic by raising billions of dollars in debt and stock. The question may seem extreme, given the way Carnival Corporation's brands have begun bouncing back. But cruisers already have been burned by the failures of several much smaller cruise companies since the pandemic began, most notably Crystal Cruises and its Asia-based sister brands Star Cruises and Dream Cruises, and the U.K.'s Cruise and Maritime Voyages. While most of Carnival Corporation's ships are now back in operation, bookings have only recently begun returning to something close to normal levels and occupancies on ships remain off their peaks.

Exclusive: A Time of Transition as Arnold Donald Prepares to Step Down as Carnival Corp. CEO

Fain, then-CEO of Royal Caribbean, was also on the panel and expressed similar optimism. TPG ended its conversation with Weinstein with a broad question about how the pandemic has changed the way he and the rest of the leadership team at Carnival Corporation think about long-term planning. Four of the brands, including Holland America and Costa, do not have a single ship on order. But since the pandemic began, such orders have been on pause, and restarting them at Carnival Corporation carries new risks given the company's high debt level.

Holland America Line Enhances Entertainment Offerings

But his upcoming departure will reduce the already low number of Black CEOs atop America’s largest companies. Arnold Donald, CEO and president of Carnival Corp., the parent company to several cruise lines, stepped down Monday, after helming the company for nearly a decade. Analysts and investors are waiting to see when the cruise lines will become cash flow positive. Executives from both Carnival and Royal Caribbean have said that would happen sometime in the next few months. While "a lot of our guests love the new ships," some of the highest ratings Carnival Corporation brands get from customers is from sailing on older ships, he says.

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He is responsible for all of the company’s financial, accounting and information technology functions. Heaney is an experienced financial executive with more than 30 years in the cruise and hospitality industries. Josh Weinstein is taking over from Arnold Donald as CEO of Carnival Corporation. During his nine-year tenure as CEO, Donald led the company to record results, including achieving the company’s highest profits in its history.

Best Covid-19 Travel Insurance Plans

Up until the pandemic, Carnival Corporation and its major rivals such as Royal Caribbean Group had long pursued a strategy of ambitious growth that involved ordering new ships almost as fast as they could be built. The arrival of new ships at major brands, often with new features, seemed to be always around the corner, and it drove both excitement and bookings among cruising fans. In 2021, the number of Black CEOs was at an all-time high with six Black chief executives. But just 19 Black CEOs have appeared on the Fortune 500 list since it was first published in 1955. Clifton Wharton became the first Black CEO of a major U.S. corporation when he took the reins of TIAA in 1987.

"I'd go so far as to say it's highly probable that you are going to see some ships actually scrapped as opposed to just moving to secondary or tertiary markets." What cruising will look like when it resumes will depend a lot on how the science evolves and the course of the virus, Donald suggested. TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett is represented on the Fortune 500 list of Black CEOs but absent from the S&P’s. Although privately held, the company is included on Fortune’s ranking because it files financial reports with U.S. regulators. Michelle Fee, CEO of Cruise Planners, said that Donald made "incredible strides and innovations that helped bring more new-to-cruise clients into the industry." And after that he said he'll consider what's next, noting he may consider other boards – or perhaps private equity, which Donald was involved with when he "retired the first time."

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

Under Duffy’s leadership, Carnival became the first major U.S. cruise line to have its entire fleet back in operations after the industry-wide pause related to the COVID pandemic. Duffy’s tenure also includes several major milestones in the company’s history, including the year-long celebration of its 50th birthday in 2022 and the moment it welcomed its 100 millionth guest on board in 2023. In the short term, of course, Weinstein will need to navigate the company through some major financial hurdles. No other segment of the travel industry has been hit as hard by the pandemic as cruise lines, which were forced to shut down operations completely in the early days of the pandemic and went many months without operating a single trip — or bringing in any revenue.

Current fleet

The Arison family controls about 27% of Carnival's stock, the largest single holding by far. For the first time since Arison's father, Ted, founded Carnival in 1972, a person outside the family will be running the company. Donald said Carnival Corp. brands have been making progress in processing refunds of late. "With the level of cancellations and the total pause of cruise, it's a huge amount of volume that we've never seen before. Our systems weren't set up to handle it." "There will be an acceleration of retirement of ships, there's no question about that," Donald said.

Travel Association, the national, non-profit organization representing all components of the travel industry, from 2020 to 2022. As the first woman to lead CLIA, she elevated the industry’s profile before consumers, regulators, industry stakeholders and the media. Duffy also spent 10 years at Maritz Travel Company, the world’s largest corporate meeting, events and incentive travel company where she became the company’s first woman president and CEO. While leading Maritz, Christine played an important role with industry leaders and U.S.

It will be about "making sure that each of our brands is doing everything they do based on their guest and target market. Those differences are to be cherished and won't be changing under his leadership, Weinstein suggests. Indeed, if anything, the Carnival Corporation brands under his watch will become more distinct. Donald was also a key figure in discussions between the cruise industry and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), lawmakers and the White House when it came to the U.S. government ending its no sail order. Carnival Corporation earned $1.6 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2022, a massive jump from $26 million in Q1 2021, when the entire industry was shut down. Recovery is still a long way away for the cruise giant which posted a $1.9 billion loss for the quarter ending on February 28.

"That doesn't preclude us from doing what we think is appropriate in the growth profile ... [But] we'd be looking at ships [scheduled to arrive] in four, five, six, seven years down the line." Many cruisers who paid in advance for cruises on these defunct brands have yet to get their money back. Among the immediate concerns that Weinstein will need to address is that some of the abovementioned debt will need to be refinanced relatively soon in a market where interest rates are rising and borrowing is getting harder. And there's growing worry among Wall Street analysts that a potential severe recession in the coming year could further weaken the company's financial position. The three-day leadership and career development conference will host more than 700 executive men of color who will have the opportunity to connect with business leaders, Fortune 500 executives and more.

"Some people talk about (reducing) density on the ship. Obviously, if you're in a cabin, you are socially distanced already. So it's not the idea of how many people you have per cabins. It's much more the public spaces on the ships." Donald said there's growing talk about restarting cruising in Germany, Italy and Spain, where new COVID-19 cases also have dropped significantly in recent months. All three countries are far ahead of the United States in bringing new cases down to low levels.

Q&A: Carnival Cruise Line president Christine Duffy - PhocusWire

Q&A: Carnival Cruise Line president Christine Duffy.

Posted: Fri, 02 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

As vice chair and a member of the company's board of directors, Donald said his number one job is to "help make sure that Josh is wildly successful." "(There) is nothing like a crisis to bring people together," he said, noting the communication, collaboration and coordination that they worked so hard to improve across brands pre-pandemic was brought to a new level thanks to the pandemic. Medallion has since been rolled out on every ship in the Princess fleet, and its footprint just keeps increasing.