17 minute read
SPECIAL REPORT
from HT-0621-Summer
by ensembleiq
Before wearable tech was a thing and IoT devices existed, one man had a vision to improve the guest experience; 10 years later he accomplished it.
JOHN PADGETT, Chief Experience and Innovation Officer at Carnival Corp., started working on the technology that would ultimately inspire the OceanMedallion while he was employed at another company famous for its ability to give consumers worldclass experiences: Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.
“Magic Kingdom is one of the best experiences in the world, but it’s a commodity experience. Everyone who pays to go there gets the same experience,” Padgett says. “And there was a tremendous amount of complication. Guests needed tickets, fast pass tickets, meal coupons, vouchers, etc.”
So, Padgett set out to offer guests a truly personalized experience that would also eliminate some of that friction. That’s when Padgett and a highly focused team created the MagicBand.
“When I envisioned the MagicBand, the wearable category didn’t even exist yet and the iPhone 1 was just being released. It ultimately solved half of the original problem — it eliminated friction and simplified the experience, which made it incredibly popular with guests, but it did not achieve the original vision of creating a unique experience for every single guest,” Padgett explains.
It took 10 years of hard work and dedication before John Padgett, CXO, Carnival Corp., was able to realize his dream of personalizing the vacation experience.
It wasn’t until Padgett started working at Carnival that he was able to achieve his goal. Key to his success: the closed ecosystem of each and every cruise ship.
“To do personalization at scale, you have to have an incredible amount of real-time intelligence,” he says. “Why? Because to deliver true personalization, we need the information the guest is creating in that very second to be reinvested in their experience that very same second. We want our guests to interact with our crew and our ship on a personalized basis that is informed in real-time by who they are and what their needs, wants and desires are that very same second.”
Where though does that real-time intelligence come from?
HOW THE MAGIC HAPPENS
Unsurprisingly, the Medallion is just the iconic element of a vast network of readers and sensors embedded across the ship that interact instantaneously with the two microscopic antennas (one NFC and one BLE) inside each guest’s OceanMedallion. Just how vast is this network? Each ship contains 72 miles of cable, 6,000 sensors, 650 readers, 500 edge computing devices and more than 4,000 interactive portals.
The resulting intelligence is associated with each and every guest in real time to fuel Carnival’s Experiential Internet of ThingsTM (xIoTTM) network which facilitates experiences for guests based on location, personal information they provide and onboard interactions.
Padgett often uses the term “fully connected” when referring to the guest experience. But what does this actually mean? According to Padgett, it means that the guest is connected to the ship environment itself, the crew, other guests (by choice) and – importantly – the internet. Providing fast, affordable and reliable high-speed internet on a cruise ship, however, is no small task. Especially when guests expect the same connectivity levels they’re used to having at home.
To ensure guests have access to incredible WiFi, Carnival partnered with SES to leverage their hybrid medium earth orbit (MEO) and geostationary (GEO) network of satellites. The MEO satellites are especially important because they reside closer to Earth and thus the signals have less distance to travel.
“Historically, cruise ships have been plagued by latency. It takes 0.6 seconds for the signal to go up to the satellite and 0.6 seconds for it to come back down. That delay compounded across unlimited internet interactions is very annoying to our guests who are used to modern-day connectivity. With MEO satellites we effectively eliminated any latency. Of course, our WiFi access points, switches, modems, satellite antennas, and the satellites themselves have all been optimized to work in the best possible way, too,” Padgett adds.
WHY GUESTS KEEP RETURNING
As all of this technology and data works together in real-time, guests are provided with a best-inclass experience. For instance, prior to arriving at the embarkation port, guests are asked to download the MedallionClass app. Within it, they upload their passports and other travel documents among other things. Then when guests arrive, they don’t have to check-in at a front desk or wait in long lines to board the ship. That information, among other things, is also available via the OceanMedallion. Similarly, when the guest approaches their stateroom door, the door automatically unlocks and greets the guest by name via a digital display. (If the guest is celebrating a birthday, anniversary or other special occasion, the digital display will reference that as well.)
SPECIAL REPORT
Accessible via guests’ smart devices and on portals throughout the ships, OceanCompass leverages the Medallion to easily locate and chat with friends and family on board, as well as enables point-to-point wayfinding throughout the ship. OceanCompass guides guests throughout their journey, providing directional information so they can seamlessly navigate to their travel companions or their next point of interest. Guests can order merchandise, services, F&B on demand anywhere on the ship and have it delivered to them, wherever they are. Additionally, these purchases throughout their voyage are seamlessly charged to the guest’s folio because of the Medallion’s proximity and crew’s ability to confirm identification via frictionless, two-factor authentication. No swipes, taps, pin codes or signatures needed. And when guests approach crew members, the crew is aware of the guest’s name and preferences which helps to personalize their interaction.
What makes this experience different from other travel experiences is that the MedallionClass Experience is not technology-focused, Padgett says, but is technology-driven. Instead of requiring guests to engage in the technology, they can be engaged in the cruise experience while the technology empowers and enhances the experience completely behind the scenes. Guests are not required to switch between mediums such as key cards, to printed pages, to mobile app. Additionally, the MedallionClass Experience is not smart device dependent. Experiences are also easily accessed using portals throughout the ship, through crew members as well as via stateroom TV.
“The reason why we have a wearable is because of the value of universal individual connectivity which creates so much intelligence we’re able to personalize each guest’s experience,” Padgett notes. “Could we do this in other ways? Absolutely, but they all put complication back on the guest or on the operator.”
While the guest experience is certainly the top priority, this intelligence allows for so much more to take place. It drives advantages in the crew experience, capacity utilization, and space allocation. It provides options to enhance security and health processes, and is beginning to aid in environmental and sustainable HVAC control. Most importantly, the same intelligence drives everything and enables the entire ecosystem to work more harmoniously, Padgett says.
COVID Conundrum? Not for Carnival
When asked how this technology will help cruise ships regain customer confidence, Padgett’s response was an emphatic: “Thank God we started working on this technology six years ago!”
Padgett believes that the OceanMedallion experience provides guests the flexibility to vacation the way they want, which will be instrumental when guests first begin to return to cruising during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our personalized and frictionless technology offers the complete opposite of what many people think cruise ships are: mass volumes of guests being served the same experience at the same time in the same space,” Padgett explains.
To help put this in perspective, he explains how just one small aspect of the cruise experience – dining – is different with OceanMedallion. A guest can choose to go to the dining hall, can choose to order a meal brought to their cabin, or can even choose to eat a meal on the Lido deck while watching the sunset. But if at anytime that guest changes their mind, and chooses to go somewhere else to eat their meal, they never have to worry that the meal will be delivered to the wrong spot.
“Wherever I am, the food goes,” Padgett explains. “And if I choose to go back to the dining room and sit there, it will end up there too. That’s just one example of how real-time location-based service in a fully connected IoT is truly different.”
In a post-COVID world, OceanMedallion also enables guests to avoid crowds like never before because it prevents queuing during the embarkation and disembarkation process. Guests receive their OceanMedallion and submit their travel documents ahead of time which means that Princess Cruise ships have no front desk.
“In a post-COVID world, so many enterprises are having to figure out how to do what is now our standard operating procedure, and so we don’t really have any post-COVID stress,” Padgett adds.
“In the traditional world, all of this data would be siloed by department according to where it was collected and for what purpose,” he adds. “Other organizations work futilely to get that siloed information to reconcile and sync. And what makes it difficult to get these silos to work together is that they can’t agree on the information base. But if all of your intelligence is generated at the same time, comes from the same source, and is generated in real-time – there is no conflict in understanding it. This allows operators to act versus debate.”
EMPLOYEES: A TOP PRIORITY
Part of the beauty of the OceanMedallion, and the technology behind it, is that it not only improves the guest experience but also the employee experience as well. This was deliberately baked into Padgett’s strategy for a very important reason.
“If you make the staff’s job easier, it ensures immediate adoption by the consumer,” he notes. “If you make something great for the consumer but horrible for the employee, the employee will tell the consumer not to like it. So, your numberone priority must be to make the technology great for the employee.”
Not only do you make staff members happier when their job is easier, you also increase labor efficiency. And on a cruise ship, that’s “huge,” explains Padgett. While hotels do have costs associated with labor, that person isn’t a factor in revenue loss. However, on a cruise ship, only a specific number of “souls” are allowed to be on board at any given time. So, the more staff you have, the less guests you have and the less revenue-generating potential is available.
“If we can make the entire labor base more efficient, that allows more guests to sail on that ship and then everyone wins: guests are happier and ships are more profitable,” he adds.
OceanMedallion helps staff members in a wide variety of ways. It eliminates queuing, which frees staff from the headache of long lines and lots of paperwork and instead allows them to greet and mingle with guests during boarding. It ensures that housekeepers are “invisible” and never intrude
SPECIAL REPORT
accidentally on guests when they’re in their cabin. It eliminates lines at the bar and frustration among guests who can’t quickly and easily get their drink. And it even helps the captain of the ship locate missing persons in milliseconds.
A VISION FOLLOWED BY UNWAVERING CONVICTION
Since the debut of this technology, Padgett has had many Fortune 500 companies – including those in the hospitality industry – visit with him and his Global Experience and Innovation team to learn about the platform. Inevitably, they’ll mention that they have an “innovation strategy,” which grinds Padgett’s gears.
“Innovation is not a strategy,” he says. “Innovation is a method to achieve a business strategy. Innovation is doing whatever the hell it takes to achieve your goal. If it takes inventing something, you invent it. If someone else has what you need, you partner with them, build great relationships and leverage it.”
And Padgett has a very specific way of achieving his business strategies. While some businesses subscribe to either the Agile or Waterfall development methods, Padgett doesn’t see much value in their approaches. Instead he prefers to follow a method of his own creation that has been proved successful during his time at both Disney and at Carnival.
“I establish a vision that is crystal clear for where we need to be five years from now,” he explains. “Everyone in the company, from the CEO to the board to all levels of the operation, has to be committed to this goal. And then I assemble a holistic team of passionate professionals that collectively possess exceptional creative, technology, operational, and business capabilities to agree that their purpose is to work together in order to reach that main goal.”
Padgett uses a global network of relationships to bring in other companies as well as individual “free agents” to work with, because what is most important to him is that the team achieve the goal — not organizations, legacy processes or enterprise politics that all distract from the mission. Once achieved, Padgett doesn’t just let the technology “go” to sink or swim on its own during its first realworld applications. Instead, his team stays directly connected to the technology as it is operating and only “leaves its side once it is in perpetual motion.
“If you’re not willing to operate what you’ve created in front of a guest and alongside an operator, then you are never holding yourself truly accountable,” Padgett notes. “Consuming – not just delivering – that experience, creates the passion to go back and refine and improve and enhance and align and pull everyone together to become even better. Perfection does not exist but must be relentlessly pursued.”
Of course, that’s not to say there won’t be some roadblocks along the way. Even with the best team,
the most supportive CEO, a committed board and the greatest vision — setbacks are bound to happen, Padgett says.
“If you have the mindset that a roadblock is an impassable obstruction, you shouldn’t even start,” he adds. “If it was easy to accomplish your goal, anyone could do it and it would already be done. You just have to understand that digital transformation and changing enterprises at scale is hard.”
In 2020, Carnival planned to convert five ships into MedallionClass ships, Padgett gives as an example. Then the pandemic happened. These ships were located all over the world, and travel was shut down completely. But Carnival still managed to achieve its goal and convert all five ships. It took a tremendous amount of coordination, partnership with operations, commitment from the board, etc., but eventually it all came together.
“Another company might have used the pandemic as an excuse to stall, lower ambitions and buy time. Not us. We said: ‘That sounds like a challenge, but we’re going to achieve our goal anyway,’” Padgett says. “It goes back to having a mission. To achieve that you need conviction, passion and a relentless ‘never-say-die’ attitude.
While the topic of this story is the technology on OceanMedallion ships, Padgett is not as proud of the technology as he is of creating that simple, personalized guest experience at scale where technology fades into the background.
“Often in the hotel space, hoteliers will throw technology amenities at guests like they’re game changers — but they’re not. Generally, they just end up creating more complexity for the guest, which makes their experience less desirable,” he says. “Guests don’t want technology for technology’s sake. People in travel get this wrong all the time because it’s sexy to talk about technology. But at the end of the day, the guest just wants to maximize the value of their time on vacation.” HT
Angela Diffl y, Co-Founder, RTN
RTN POS Security Technical Guidance Helps Any-Size Restaurant Level Up
The Restaurant Technology Network (RTN) recently completed a seven-month-long collaborative workgroup, uniting restaurant operators and suppliers in a common mission: to uncover and document best practices for securing the pointof-sale. RTN hosted a webinar on May 25 to discuss the best takeaways and share the completed output with the industry.
The POS Security Best Practices webinar featured panelists Courtney Radke, CISO for National Retail, Fortinet, Aaron Branson, Senior VP, Marketing, Netsurion and Tim Tang, Director, Enterprise Solutions for HughesON.
KEY INSIGHTS
“POS is super evolutionary,” commented Radke. “It’s almost evolved into a point-of-business. There’s a real need now for standardization. We are all in this for the same reason: to create a better, safer, more consistent guest experience.”
The RTN workgroups bring top cybersecurity talent in the industry together. “The criminals are collaborating, sharing tools and supporting each other; we must do the same,” said Tang. “Restaurants compete on compelling food experiences, not cybersecurity. This is an area we need to come together. I encourage all restaurants to participate in the workgroups.”
According to Branson, “Security in theory versus security in practice is tough. The key is standardization. The (RTN) document does a nice job of providing guidance when it comes to franchisee and franchisor shared responsibilities, endpoint security integration and smart partnerships. I recommend restaurants spend some time unpacking the section on MSSP considerations.”
“We wanted to make cybersecurity more accessible to the industry,” added Tang. “What do you do initially, versus how you grow your cybersecurity stack as your business grows. We’ve included things like third-party integration, privacy considerations, infrastructure from a managed SD-WAN perspective or WiFi. The emerging brands, as well as the more mature brands, can really get a lot out of it.”
“We typically think about the credit card data being the target,” mentioned Branson, “but it’s important to be aware of what’s happening with supply chain attacks, like SolarWinds, and ransomware attacks like what we just saw with Colonial Pipeline. The restaurant space has all these supply chains and integrations. I’m curious about what the current exposure may be to a POS ransomware attack.”
The RTN POS Security Best Practices is a great resource designed for new brands and established brands alike. “The participation of the operators in this group allowed us to create an evolutionary guide, former, current and future state, and
—Courtney Radke, CISCO for National Retail, Fortinet
what each of those mean,” concluded Radke. “It’s okay to be a fast follower, and not on the cutting edge. There are still things you can do to secure those environments today. We’re just trying to give you some tips and tricks, wherever you are along the journey.”
Join RTN Workgroups to participate in workgroups with the industry’s top technology talent and help shape restaurant technology for the future. https://restauranttechnology network.com/ HT
RTN’s POS Implementation Security Best Practices technical document RTN On-Demand Webinar: POS Security Best Practices
SAVE THE DATE • DECEMBER 13 - 16, 2021
2021
FAIRMONT SCOTTSDALE PRINCESS
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA
The Hotel Tech Industry Reunites, this December.
Technology is more important to the hospitality industry than ever before. Reunite with your industry. Map your brand’s future. Find the technologies that will pave the way. HT-NEXT is welcoming you back to a powerful networking and immersive learning experience.
We’re Binging on Big Ideas for a Bold Future
• Creating a Contactless Experience • Hospitality & the Gig Economy • Unraveling New Consumer Expectations • Beyond the Four Walls: New Hotel Business Models • Money Talks: Cryptocurrency, Payment Trends & More • Rethinking Guestroom Technology And much more!
