In this case study we look at how cruise ship operator Royal Caribbean is using artificial intelligence, machine learning, machine vision and facial recognition technology to deliver a superior customer experience.

1. AI On Cruise Ships -
The Fascinating Ways
Royal Caribbean
Uses Facial Recognition
And Machine Vision

2. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Title
Text
IntroductionIntroduction
In the travel industry, the primary use cases for artificial intelligence (AI) and
machine learning technologies revolve around improving customer
experiences.
Chatbots, in particular, have proven popular across this industry, with natural
language processing (NLP) applied to the challenges of dealing with customer
inquiries and providing personalized travel experiences.
AI On Cruise Ships – The Fascinating Ways Royal
Caribbean Uses Facial Recognition And Machine
Vision

3. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Title
Text
IntroductionIntroduction
Alongside this, recommendation engines power the most popular online travel
portals such as Expedia and Trivago, combining customer data with
information on millions of hotel vacancies and airline flights worldwide.
However, when it comes to operators, compared to other industries such as
finance or healthcare, the travel industry as a whole is at an early stage when
it comes to organization-wide deployment of smart, self-learning machine
technology.
AI On Cruise Ships – The Fascinating Ways Royal
Caribbean Uses Facial Recognition And Machine
Vision

4. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Check-ins and Departure Times
One industry leader that is bucking this trend, though, is cruise operator Royal Caribbean
Cruises. In recent years, the world's second-largest cruise operator has put AI to use to solve
several problems.
As far as customer experience is concerned, the overriding goal has been to remove the
“friction” often experienced. Until recently, this was seen as an inevitable consequence of
having to check in a large number of passengers at a single departure time, rather than deal
with a continuous flow of guests arriving and departing, as at a hotel or resort.
The company’s SVP of digital, Jay Schneider, tells me “Our goal was to allow our customers to
get ‘from car to bar’ in less than 10 minutes.
"Traditionally it would take 60 to 90 minutes to go through the process of boarding a ship,
and as a result, people didn't feel like they were on vacation until day two – we wanted to give
them their first day back."

5. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Facial Recognition
A vital tool in achieving this aim was the deployment of facial recognition technology. It uses
computer-vision equipped cameras that can recognize travellers as they board, cutting down
the need for verifying identity documents and travel passes manually.
This could have been done by providing customers with wearables such as a wrist band;
however, the decision was taken to eliminate the need for external devices by using biometric
identifiers – faces.
"We wanted to get people on their vacations as quickly as possible, and we didn't want to
have to ship every passenger a wearable – we want you to use the wearable you already have,
which is your face.“
Computer vision-equipped cameras are built into the terminals that customers interact with as
they board, and sophisticated algorithms match the visual data they capture with
photographic identification which is submitted before their departure date.

6. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Monitoring and Managing Systems
AI doesn't stop improving customer experience once guests are on board. Several other
initiatives are designed to make passengers more comfortable or help them make the most of
their time. These range from personalized recommendations for how they should spend their
time on board, to monitoring and managing footfall as people move around the boat and
queue to make use of services.
These monitoring systems are also powered by computer vision, but rather than recognizing
individual faces, they monitor the build-up of bodies as passengers move about, allowing
congestion to be detected and dealt with where necessary.
The technology for this application was built in partnership with Microsoft, and involved retro-
fitting existing CCTV cameras with smart technology. This avoided the need for ships to be
taken out of action while the entire camera network was upgraded with computer vision
cameras.
“We have massive ships – we didn’t want to take them out of service, gut them and put
sensors in, so we worked with Microsoft to understand how we could leverage our existing
and somewhat antiquated CCTV cameras.

7. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Monitoring and Managing Systems
"Microsoft was a great partner … we threw our data scientists at the problem, and we've been
able to take old cameras, as well as fisheye cameras, and detect humans through the use of
AI.
“There’s a ton of use cases – it gives us information on things like table turnover times in
restaurants, and we’re going to start using it from this summer to alert crew members when
lines are backing up.”
This will mean crew can be redeployed in real time to wherever their services are in demand.

8. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Reducing Food Waste
Another initiative is aimed at cutting down on food that goes to waste on board cruise liners.
With 65,000 plates of food served daily aboard the vessel Symphony of the Seas, AI helps
make decisions about how much food should be stocked to ensure guests don’t go hungry
while keeping wastage to a minimum.
“We like to think we’re probably the most sustainability-friendly cruise line – and one of the
things we’ve focused on when deploying AI is working towards our goals of improving
sustainability. Outside of the cost savings, and improved freshness of the food we serve, it has
sustainability benefits … we’ve seen a reduction in food waste as a result of this pilot,” says
Schneider.

9. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Chatbots and Machine Learning
The most recent application – which began trials just weeks ago – is Royal Caribbean’s
chatbot, styled as a virtual concierge, which allows passengers to ask questions about their
voyage, destinations, or how they should spend their time on board.
“The whole idea, again, is to pull people out of lines – we don’t want passengers waiting in
line at guest services to get questions answered, we want them to be able to get the
information they need right away,” Schneider tells me.
The chatbot employs NLP and machine learning to understand what the most commonly
asked questions are, and become more efficient at providing personalized answers. It uses a
“human-in-the-loop” model, meaning that if it can’t work out what a customer wants, a
human customer service agent is paged into the conversation. The NLP algorithms are then
capable of learning how they could have tackled the question, by monitoring the human
agent’s response.

10. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Chatbots and Machine Learning
With this, as with its other AI initiatives, Royal Caribbean follows a model of carefully
monitored, small-scale trial deployments, before individual initiatives are put into
organization-wide use.
Schneider tells me “We believe we get the best results with this method … test, adjust, scale …
rather than ‘ready, fire, aim’ – which the rest of our industry seems to do! So, once we’ve
carefully tested it and we’re sure it’s ready to go, we will scale it.”

11. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Gathering Data
When it comes to gathering data, cruise operators like Royal Caribbean are in a unique
position, as they effectively function as hotels, food and beverage providers, supply chain and
logistics operations, shipping operators and entertainment and gaming companies, all rolled
into one.
This means customer journeys can be tracked and data gathered across all of these functions,
enabling a holistic approach to data-driven customer service.
“As you can imagine,” Schneider says, “there are any number of opportunities … we’ve
focused on yield management in cabin occupancy … the list goes on.
"We're focused on testing, adjusting and scaling examples of where we can use AI to change
the customer and the crew experience. Not everything has been successful, but the vast
majority have shown early signs of success, and we've been extremely thrilled with the results
so far."

12. © 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website
© 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website

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