Introduction

Carnival Corporation & PLC (“Carnival”) was founded in 1994 after 22 years of successful operations of Carnival Cruise Line, which was founded in 1972. In 1987, Carnival launched its IPO; the influx of capital allowed the company to expand through acquisition.

Carnival has established itself as a leader in cruise tourism and offers cruise experiences ranging from no frills to ultimate luxury. One of its successes is in offering price points that appeal to potential guests based on the type of experiences they desire. Nearly every American is able to afford a cruise on one of its many ships, making cruising an affordable vacation for every economic level of clientele. Carnival does fun well and its incorporation of fun into a core corporate value is obvious.

In 2022, Carnival will celebrate its 50th birthday. Thanks to shrewd business practices, Carnival and its nine cruise lines will have survived more than a year of a no-sail order from the US Government. Nothing has been more financially devastating to Carnival than the Covid-19 crisis. With a 75% loss in revenues from 2019 (Carnival, 2020), many companies may have shuttered.

We feel that the pandemic crisis meets the cruise industry at a crossroads and Carnival should take this opportunity to more fully address its reputation. As experts in Corporate Reputation Management, we have witnessed that a solid reputation can soften a crisis’ blow to stock prices, revenues and profitability. We have studied companies that have resurrected themselves and we believe Carnival can do that as well.

Below we present our plan for taking the helm of Carnival’s reputation and steering it into calmer waters. In each section, we begin an assessment of what Carnival has done and we end with our recommendations. These recommendations will stabilize its reputation and future successes1 .

1 Throughout the document, we use Carnival Cruise Line as the example of one of the cruise line brands. For the sake of brevity and because there are nine cruise lines under the corporate umbrella, we chose to focus on one only.