Let’s Get Technical
Behind the Scenes of Carnival Cruise Line’s Itinerary Planning
F
red Stein, vice president of revenue planning and fleet deployment for Carnival Cruise Line, and Ugo Savino, Carnival’s director of deployment and itinerary planning, recently joined the FCCA to lift the curtains on their inner-workings to help destinations and stakeholders better understand the craft of deployment and how to choreograph mutual success. A lightly-edited transcript of the conversation follows: 18 THIRD QUARTER 2018 | TRAVEL & CRUISE
What do you enjoy most about your roles? FS: I think it’s just amazing to watch all the components that are required to put an itinerary plan together. There’s a host of folks that we have to work with internally to make sure that the itinerary is operable and then the time that we spend with the destinations to work with them together to make sure that the guests are going to have a good experience.
US: To add to what Fred was saying, the process is so complex and articulated, but it’s interesting how many people we bring together, both from outside the organization—namely ports, port representatives, port authorities, tour operators, and so on—and the internal stakeholders that have an impact on and deal with our itinerary planning exercise. This is absolutely critical for us, in my opinion, because only by bringing everybody together can
