Cruise with a medallion that records your every whim

It will let travellers plan their vacations, open stateroom doors or order cocktails

Inside a clandestine Carnival Corporation complex here, two former Disney executives have been plotting a drastic cruise industry overhaul.

Their mission: Take lessons learned at Walt Disney World, where they helped bring about a $1-billion vacation management system involving Fitbit-style bracelets that link to personal information, and apply them to cruises. The result: Millions of passengers on Carnival ships will soon be using a similar but more advanced system that allows travellers to do everything from plan vacations to open stateroom doors to order poolside cocktails.

“As long as bigger, newer, cooler ships have kept coming, the cruise industry has treated guest liabilities — standing in long lines, having a frustrating embarkation experience — as acceptable,” said John Padgett, who joined Carnival in 2014 as chief experience and innovation officer after 18 years at Disney. “That thinking stops now.”

Carnival, which operates more than 100 ships worldwide under 10 brands, will unveil its ambitious technology initiative on Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In a keynote speech, Arnold W Donald, Carnival’s chief executive, intends to announce that the system — an app called Ocean Compass paired with a quarter-size so-called smart medallion that can be carried in a pocket or worn as jewellery — will arrive on the company’s Princess Cruises fleet this year.

Donald declined in an interview to give a timeline for bringing the technology (code name: Trident) to other Carnival brands. But he emphasised that rolling out the personalised disks and app was a company-wide priority.

“The cost is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and, over time, more than that,” Donald said. “People want the world to be organised around them. On vacation, even more so.”

Analysts expect the technology to increase profits in multiple ways, including allowing Carnival to charge more for tickets, particularly on older ships. Ease of purchase is another big component: Cruisers will be able to pay for food, drinks and merchandise simply by having their credit card-connected Ocean Medallion in their pocket. Carnival’s disks, each laser-etched with the guest’s name, will also power a new, ship-wide gambling platform.

And Carnival gift shops will be stocked with a wide array of jewellery, clips and key chains that passengers can buy to carry and display their disks.

Carnival’s top rival, Royal Caribbean Cruises, already offers smartbands on high-end ships like the Anthem of the Seas. Called WOW bands, they serve as room keys, allow for wireless payment and make it faster and easier to embark and disembark.

But Carnival says that its offering takes such systems much further, in part because its technology is designed to be invisible. Unlike with smartbands, there is no need to tap a sensor on a stateroom door for entry; simply approaching the correct room with the Ocean Medallion in your pocket will unlock the door. Among the medallion system’s other offerings is a navigation tool designed to help family members find one another on the often-labyrinthine ships. 

© New York Times News Service