1. Hannah Cheney, Liz Heyrman, Chelsea Rotter, Amilia Winter, Kendall Summers and Branden Surginer
Kendall: Hi we are Red 3 and our client is Carnival Cruise Lines

2. Our Client
Formed in 1972
Headquarters in Miami, Florida and London, England.
$15.8 Billion revenue in 2012 (according to…)
100 Ships and employees 77,000 shipboard
Kendall: Our client under study is Carnival Cruise Lines, which is a British-American cruise line based in Doral, Florida. Formed in 1972, it has headquarters in Miami, Florida, and London England. According to…. it has a $15.8 billion dollar revenue in Carnival has 100 ships and77,000 employees shipboard, not including corporate. The mission of the Carnival Corporation is “to take the world on vacation and deliver exceptional experiences through many of the world’s best-known cruise brands that cater to a variety of different geographic regions and lifestyles, all at an outstanding value unrivaled on land or at sea” (Carnival Corporation Website).
Our research objectives were first to understand people’s perceptions of Carnival Cruise Lines. We then wanted to target the issues Carnival Cruise line has faced with the sinking ship from the past incidence due to technical difficulties on the ship. From there we wanted to target past Carnival Cruise passengers as well as new clients to reaffirm misconceptions about Carnival Cruise Line.

3. Target Audience Demographics Families Middle-income Psychographics
Relaxing for parents
Activities for kids
First time cruisers
Liz: We began our research on Carnival with looking at who they target. The demographics for Carnival Cruise Lines are adult men and women between the ages of 30 and 45. These men and women would most likely have a family with children under the age of 18. The men and women have jobs with a stable household environment.
The psychographics for Carnival are all family driven. Carnival promotes fun and exciting activities for the kids while also promoting a relaxing vacation for the adults. Carnival values a price point that many families can afford while still giving many options of the types of cruises people can go on. People who choose Carnival may also be new to cruise lines because that is whom Carnival tends to target.

4. SWOT Analysis Strengths: Weaknesses:
• Global Presence
• Tons of entertainment about all ‘fun’ ships
• Strong Consumer Demand in Europe.
• Diverse Staff.
• Large company that they have significant cost advantages over most of their competitors.
Weaknesses:
• Crashes and stalled boats in the past two years have caused many customers to become skeptical
• Carnival derives a majority of its revenue (nearly 52%) from US customers
• Hurricanes and Other Bad Weathers.
• Rising Cost of Fuel.
Opportunities:
• Expand the Luxury Liners.
• Offer more destinations.
• They are also planning to introduce the larger cruise liner Costa Romantica.
• Carnival announced the union of Costa Europa with Thomson Cruises, a British Travel Company.
Threats:
• In 2009, Carnival experienced bad press when three passengers fell off ships in a three week period.
• Known experiences of the passengers on the boats that were stalled and stranded in the ocean, newspaper articles written about this incident, and the opinions that were created by the events (Italy 2012, Feb 2013).
Chelsea: This is CCL corporations swot analysis that includes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that are involved with CC.
We believe the most important __ include:
strengths: that CC has a strong global presence. Another positive is that they have a ton of entertainment options available on their ‘fun’ ships.
weaknesses: CC has had many incidents including crashes and stalled boats within the past few years cause negative media attention and skeptical customers. CC derives a majority of its revenue from US customers so although they have a strong global presence the do not have a strong global clientele.
opportunities: by expanding their luxury liners and improving all ships it would give CC brand a connection to higher quality and a more stable traveling experience. As well as offering more destinations to satisfy all clientele’s interests.
threats: their threats included situations of negative media.through unfavorable experiences by customers. this gives CC a negative media presence, poor PR as well as unhappy customers .
This information helped us format how and what we wanted to research when conducting our focus groups and surveys

5. Focus Group Research College aged women Carnival Cruise Line standings
Media presence
Hannah: During our focus group, we wanted to examine how negative incidences has affected Carnival. We hoped to target previous Carnival Cruise goers as well as travelers who used other line. Our group wanted to understand what college students seek in a vacation, who they travel with and how they receive information about these trips.
Our focus group consisted of 8 college women, 5 of whom had been on at least 1 cruise. Our focus group could have been more conclusive if there would have been more diversity present during our discussion. We first began with general vacation questions and then grew into more targeted questions about the Carnival brand.
The most relevant information that we found in our focus group is that Carnival Cruise Lines is not at all perceived as college vacation destination. This reaffirmed our original belief that Carnival is mainly a family vacation destination. Secondly, we found that Carnival is second if not third when choosing a cruise line go on. Royal Caribbean seems to be their biggest competitor when it comes to targeting college aged students. Lastly, we found that a majority of the negative perception around Carnival Cruise was done through new sources, which did not resonate with the participants in our focus group. Therefore, not neither a negative or positive perception of Carnival.

6. Survey Research Reputations Unfinished Surveys Public Relations
Branden:
Through our research and in our focus groups, we have discovered that Carnival Cruise Lines does not have the greatest reputation.
This led us to create our surveys. We found more success in the Qualtrics survey to reach more recipients. Although, we saw an inconsistencies with the number of respondents we reached. We had 109 recipients, but not everyone responded in ways that we could actually use the information. We used the snowball effect to attempt to reach a diverse crowd of college students trying specifically to survey past cruise users.
The format of our surveys questioned recipients on the ranking of Carnival Cruise Lines in comparison to other cruise lines. With the information that we have found in our survey, we can understand that there may be a gap between news sources and the Carnival Cruise Lines public relations. In our survey, we asked college students to try and understand vacation wants and desires. Moving on to trying to understand how these college students perceive the media.

7. Evidence Qualtrics RealityLive
Who do you think that Carnival Cruise Lines targets?
RealityLive
According to our survey findings, 87% of respondents said they go on a cruise with their family. Only 8% responded with the answer friends and 5% responded with significant other. This also told us that this is how they perceive the CC brand. Through our Qualtrics survey, we were able to understand that recipient's perceived CCL target was the elderly and families, while young adults remained fairly neutral. Through the RealityLive survey, we were able to break down this perception and understand that if CCL were to seek expansion, they should change their brand image to different target desires.

8. Evidence
When researching the attractions for cruises, we found that ports were the most important for both male and female. Females top three were ports at 46.88%, restaurants at 25%, and outdoor activities at 18.75%. Males were attracted to ports, restaurants and nightlife equally at 28.57% for their top three amenities. Rooms and the spa are not top priority for either males or females, both received 0%. At first, we were surprised by the response for nightlife. We thought that our target audience would include that as an important factor due to the age of the participants who took our survey. Taking a second look at this statistic, we came to the conclusion that the participants did not include nightlife as an incredibly important factor in what they prefer because they also, in general, stated that they tend to travel with their family while going on a cruise. This information helped us to understand how to shape the cruise lines to target college students and other groups to grow the Carnival’s clientele.

9. Our Recommendation Stronger media presence
Better relationship with news sources
Creating campaigns to target other group trips
college trips
business/corporate trips
Amilia

10. Work Cited Business Insights Essentials Carnival.com
Carnival corporation & PLC
Carnival Corp. Swot Analysis
Carnival Corporation SWOT analysis
Cruise Line International Association
Hoovers online
Time Magazine
USA Today