Jason Liberty told media onboard the world’s largest cruise ship that the hype had been created by Royal’s marketing teams, who understood “how to leverage the tools” available to them.
“We’ve built the biggest, baddest ship on the planet,” he said. “That in itself is a crown jewel for marketing. We could get our guests dreaming about what they can do on here – and that really accelerated things.
"Our marketing team did an exceptional job getting it out there and, of course, the level of posting and sharing about this being the biggest and baddest ship in the world drove a lot of that demand.”
A social media campaign around the 7,600-passenger ship started in October 2022, when the family-focused line first released details about the vessel.
Royal Caribbean International president Michael Bayley shared Liberty’s comments, saying: “We had an immense digital library of assets, so when we did launch Icon in October 2022, we used the digital assets to push [Icon] through social media. We found the response was extraordinary.
“Our total social media following is close to 10 million. We started pushing Icon through these social channels in a very free-form way. People took it, adopted it and ran with it and suddenly it just spread.”
Liberty revealed the extent to which the line had had to “really work with television stations just to get some content” ahead of previous ship launches.
But he added: “This time [television stations] were lined up around the corner begging to come onto the ship. That says a lot about how tuned in this product really is and how incredible this ship is.”
Icon of the Seas – the 65th ship in the Royal Caribbean Group’s fleet – has five new “neighbourhoods”, or zones, where guests can go, 21 new dining, bars and nightlife options and 14 new cabin grades.
Bayley said around 80% of the cabins on Icon can accommodate families. The ship is scheduled to operate a mix of Eastern and Western Caribbean itineraries, with calls into the line’s private island, Perfect Day at CocoCay, from Miami until spring 2026.
Next ship class?
When asked about the line’s next ship class after Icon class, Bayley said: “We’ve got two classes of ship – Radiance and Vision – and, like me, they’re getting older. They’re beautiful ships and they’re beautifully constructed.
“We’re concepting how we would replace these ships with a new class of ships at Royal Caribbean International. We’re actively working on what that looks like.”
He added: “Plans have to go through the corporate machine and through the board, but I can assure you that once they’ve got approval, they’re going to be amazing. We’ve got some great ideas.”
