Royal Caribbean has dubbed its newest ship, the Oasis-Class Utopia of the Seas, as the "World's Biggest Weekend."
The party vibe on the ship is amped up compared with other ships in its class, and when the cruise line talks about the ship, it throws around the word "party" a lot.
The cruise line launched the ship in July with a special naming cruise, which offered a party featuring Utopia's godmother, Meghan Trainor; Rev Run of the legendary Run DMC, and DJ Ruckus.
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"The celebration will set the tone for vacations on Utopia, where everyone to make more memories on a short getaway than ever," the cruise line said in a news release.
"Friends and families can celebrate any occasion or just getting away with a lineup of experiences that brings unmatched weekend energy to the table. There’s everything from more than 40 ways to dine, drink and party, including a lineup of parties only on Utopia,"
Utopia will sail three- and four-day trips, with Friday through Monday and Monday through Friday itineraries. Both will stop at the cruise line's Perfect Day at CocoCay private island.
“We set out to create a utopian playground at sea that delivers the perfect short getaway and ultimate vacation,” said Royal Caribbean Group CEO Jason Liberty.
Utopia of the Seas packs in the parties, but it also celebrates families. The ship sort of embodies how the Royal Caribbean brand clearly serves both audiences.
Image source: Dan Kline/ComeCruiseWith.com
Royal Caribbean serves families
Utopia of the Seas may be the "World's Biggest Weekend," featuring near-endless parties, but it's also a family-friendly ship. That's part of Royal Caribbean's strategy.
"For the Royal brand, we are very much a multigenerational family brands," Royal Caribbean International CEO Michael Bayley said during its second-quarter earnings call. "We're fortunate that we've got the scale and the size we've seen over the past couple of years that we've got growth in every single segment. And we know that the on-ramp for cruise is the short product."
He said the cruise line had been leaning into this idea for years.
"We've known that for quite some time. We changed up our strategy some years ago with the development of Perfect Day at CocoCay and significant investment in many of our ships that we moved to the short cruise market," he said.
"And we started to really aggregate that segment of our business and the volume of new-to-cruise is significantly higher on short product than it is on longer product for very logical reasons."
Using Utopia of the Seas on short cruises is the first time Royal Caribbean has used a new ship in that way. It's a clear attempt to expand the cruising audience.
"We found that when you get the product right, you can stimulate a large amount of demand," he added. "And I think what we've seen with Utopia is it was a very strategic decision to take a brand new Oasis-Class that we started to work on some years ago in terms of the product, the energy, what we're offering the customer, and placing it into the Port Canaveral Orlando market, a drive to market, which is significant."
Royal Caribbean wants to serve all customers
All Utopia of the Seas sailings stop at Perfect Day at CocoCay. That will also be true for Star of the Seas, the second Icon-Class ship, which will also be sailing out of Port Canaveral.
"And certainly, when you think of Icon in the seven-day market and soon-to-be Star of the Seas, which is also going to Port Canaveral down into Perfect Day. We've got a really good, strong range of products that we can offer to the customer and they're booking it," Bayley said.
Icon has been sailing at around 132% occupancy with "very high" customer satisfaction.
Liberty says Royal Caribbean, which also owns Celebrity Cruises and Silversea, has the range needed to meet people's needs at various phases of life.
"I think Utopia is just a great example of our intentionality," he said. "I mean each of our brands are hyperfocused on understanding the different segments, the consumer of today and the consumer of tomorrow, and growing demand.
"And our commentary around what's happening with the younger generation and half of our guests are now kind of in that category, though I consider myself young but I'm not in that category, I guess."
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Royal Caribbean wants to be able to address families across multiple generations.
"It's us trying to address these multiple generations, these multiple experiences that people are looking to collect and trying hard to meet our guests there," he said.
"And I think you can see that whether you're looking at Utopia with the short whether you're seeing that with Icon, but you see that in Celebrity, you see that with Silversea. And our goal is to really make sure we have an experience that matches with the guests at different points in life, and that goes to our overarching strategy of having a lifetime of vacations."
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