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It’s not just the size of Wonder making waves. The ship also features a number of new venues, several of which have proven so popular Bayley hints they could be retrofitted to other Royal ships. This includes new southern speciality restaurant The Mason Jar. “It's comical really because it's the kind of food that we all want to avoid – we're talking really southern fried chicken. All kinds of sudden pancakes with syrupy content – but God, everybody loves it!” Bayley grins.

 

“Normally we’ll take a concept that we see as a real winner and then we'll put it on the entire fleet.” Asked specifically if The Mason Jar is one such concept, Bayley smiles: “Yes it looks like it's going to be a winner.” 

 

Whether it makes it onto the menu for Icon – the line’s newest class of ship which launches next year – remains however to be seen. 

 

What Bayley can reveal about the new 5,000 passenger Icon of the Seas is that it will debut in the UK first when it leaves the shipyard in autumn 2023. “The UK market is so important that I promise you will bring Icon of the seas into Southampton. The UK will be the first country and market that we will bring this incredible ship into [when it launches] in ’23.”

 

UK agents will also be given a first look at Icon during “a big interactive event” trade in New York later this year. “We’re still debating the date but as soon as we know we’ll start sending out save the dates.”

 

Bayley describes Icon, which has been five years in the making, as “genuinely game changing”.  “We recently rented a movie theatre in Miami last week and we invited about 150 of our key marketing and sales and revenue people from Royal Caribbean to spend a whole day reviewing Icon,” he explains. “All I can say is wow. I’ve been involved in it for five years, but I sat in this movie seat and watched and it was mind blowing.”

 

Icon of the Seas will also be the first of three Royal Caribbean ships to use liquefied natural gas (LNG), and will utilise shore power to reduce carbon output.

The sustainability challenge

(Credit: Noah Buscher / Unsplash)
(Credit: Noah Buscher / Unsplash)

Bayley acknowledges that with regards to sustainability, the biggest challenge for global shipping remains the issue of fuel. “At the end of the day that’s the thing that really changes everything. That is a global shipping challenge for the future.

 

“There’s a lot of investment now in new fuel technologies and one of the steps towards that is LNG. LNG is a remarkably cleaner fuel, but there are still issues” he admits. “It’s not the perfect fuel. We need to think about where we are going to be in the next decade or so in terms of new fuels. And that’s something that’s that the entire global shipping industry is working towards.”

 

He is also keen to point out Royal Caribbean is “the owner of a huge wind farm in the United States” and is eager to stress: “We have been heavily engaged for many, many years now in sustainable farming and making sure that we’re minimising our carbon footprint. We’ve made commitments over the next couple of decades to get to a place of carbon net zero as a company, which is a huge task, given the fact that we’re cruise business; we’re a shipping business.”

 

Such a commitment is in fact a gargantuan task, which companies across the globe (TTG included) are grappling with. However Bayley insists Royal Caribbean is rising to the challenge.

 

“We’ve got a whole team of people in our design innovation group that are focused on our sustainability efforts. It’s built now into our corporate objectives and targets. It’s part of our overall incentive program for all employees. We’re committed to heading in the right direction. And it’s a genuine commitment,” he says emphatically. “We’ve all got families, we’ve all got kids, we’re all looking to the future.”

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