Royal Caribbean, a global leader in the cruise industry, wanted to digitize the cruising experience. Online booking, embarkation, booking events and room service can be accomplished with only a few clicks on the Royal mobile app (android & iOS).  

My team was responsible for an on-demand food and drink delivery solution on the ship.  Think Uber Eats or Grubhub except on a massive ship floating in the ocean.

Implementing this solution had some very unique challenges:

• Location services - Google maps has great location services but how will that work in a remote location without data connectivity? First, we had to build our own on-ship wifi infrastructure. Then, using geofencing technology, we could map out areas on the ship that would enable or disable this feature. For example, the pool on the 11th floor can support on-demand ordering but the sundeck retreat on the 7th floor may not support the feature. Finally, we had to identify what floor the guest was on by measuring their relative height above sea level.

• Operations - Kitchen galleys needed to be operationally set up to receive these on-demand orders. When the kitchen is designed to cook 4,000 lobster tails for dinner, anything new to the assembly line is going to be met with instant resistance. We needed to set up tablet devices and printers in small kitchen galleys so the chefs could receive these orders, prepare the food and update the status along the way. Additionally, we had to make sure that the order was routed to the correct galley based on the customers location.

• Adoption - Due to the galley operational restrictions, it was difficult to roll-out the solution across the entire ship. This limited our ability to market the solution so guests didn’t know the service was available. On the employee side, while the staff was trained, they were concerned about collecting their tips which created hesitation around using the solution. A lot of time was spent on ship with the team training, coaching and optimizing the workflow for perfection.