Carnival Strategy Chief on Brand Collaboration and Why People Don't Cruise

A few years ago, Carnival Corp. endured a series of mishaps and missteps that turned the company into something of a punchline in the minds of vacationers. Under the stewardship of new CEO Arnold Donald, however, the ship has been righted through an overhaul of the company's operations and marketing campaigns that have helped build trust with consumers. Carnival Corp.'s chief strategy officer Josh Leibowitz joined the company shortly after Donald, following stints with McKinsey & Co. and Idealab, and helped revamp the company's internal operations with an eye on how the company can get more people to cruise instead of choosing other types of vacations. Leibowitz spoke to Skift about the challenges he faced in helping reform Carnival Corp. and how the company has tweaked its strategy to attract more cruisers in both North America and Asia. Skift: It’s interesting because it sounds like at the time you came in it was at that period where Carnival was having some trouble, like Carnival was a sketchy proposition. But when you came in you must have seen regardless of the public perception that the business model was strong. Leibowitz: The current situation was driven by a few unfortunate events. But I saw some trends, including rapid growth around the world in terms of major markets. I saw a trend at least in that time around a continued increase in people’s ability to enjoy and spend their vacations. I also saw a population in the U.S., which would ultimately have exceptional growth in this industry. So let’s talk about the strategy for a minute. When Arnold first came in one of the first things we did is we went off to North Carolina and had a few days of time in the country to talk through the business. Basically in preparation for that I built the room of insights on the industry that I had gathered from my time three months into the company from conversations I’d had. Also observations about our brands, about the vacation market, about management, about our scale in terms of purchasing, and