by Eric Bowman
Last updated: 12:15 AM ET, Mon October 20, 2025
Royal Caribbean's Chairman Richard Fain has a new book set to release, which details unique tales from his storied career in the cruise industry.
Fain's book "Delivering the Wow" goes on sale October 21. You can preorder it on Amazon.
I had the chance to interview Fain to learn what readers can look forward to in the book, as well as what the whole process was like for him.
From the time Carnival placed a bid for $550 million to buy Royal Caribbean to what the hardest part about being a CEO is, Fain shares what his book is all about in the video above.
Transcript:
Eric Bowman: Hey everyone. I'm Eric Bowman, Editor in Chief for TravelPulse. Joining me On the Pulse today we have Richard Fain, Chairman of the board for Royal Caribbean Group. Welcome, Richard. Thanks for joining.
Richard Fain: Well, Eric, thank you for having me. I'm pleased to be here.
EB: We're excited to have such an icon of the cruise industry here to talk about some pretty cool things. Richard, you got some something special in the works going on right now. Can you tell us about your, your new book and the process of that and when you had the idea for it?
RF: Well, it's kind of fun. You know, I never intended to write a book and I'm quite happy to settle back and enjoy, going forward, but people kept talking to me and they, and there was always one thing. I mean, they liked the cruises and they liked the ships and everything else, but they always said. The culture is so amazing, the people, the passion. I kept seeing it. Every time I would meet one of our people and they would talk about how happy they were and how fulfilled, you know, and, and just, it felt very good.
And so I really felt, I wanted to sort of explain, well, how did, how did this happen? Did this just happen on its own or was there something that drove it? And it did, it did feel to me like we had a few key principles that made that all happen, and I really felt like sharing it.
EB: Yeah, it comes out October 21st, so we're looking forward to that. You can order in the description below. We'll have the link there for everyone watching to dive into that. So, with the title, “Delivering the Wow” how'd you come up with that? And, and what does it mean to you specifically to Deliver the Wow.
RF: Well delivering Wow is actually, interesting enough, it's a key part of our own internal thought process. I mean, the name actually came because we were kind of coming up with an acronym of gold standards and we had a G and an O and an L, and we needed a D. And somebody said, well it should be the wow. But, wow doesn't begin with a D. Then somebody said, well, we deliver the, wow.
That's what we do, we do with special where, you know, it's an extra something at dinner time or if you see a kid, you actually, the, the person gets down and gets on their side. It's just the everyday things of delivering the wow. And that is what Royal Caribbean does. And so, it's such an important mantra within the company and it felt like a natural title to the book.
EB: It just fits with what you guys offer, what you've been about in your storied career. So, speaking of that career, you're certainly no stranger to overcoming challenges the cruise industry faced, you know, 9/11, the recession, the pandemic, just to name a few of the not so great times there. But I'm curious, as it pertains to the book here, were there any challenges with that, in writing the book and getting that out, that you had to deal with and overcome?
RF: Well, writing a book is a totally different experience, and I think I know something about the cruise industry, but I know nothing about the book industry, and it's, it's a tough industry and it requires much more work than I expected.
It's much more of a process and it's everything. It's, what do you put in the book and how do you come up with a title, and how do you print it and do you have - just an example, I wanted to have those little vignettes of what some of the nautical terms were. Well, that's a little unusual. And so we talked about that. And I think actually the biggest challenge for me was selecting, what do you want to talk about? I mean, I could go on forever and I know I'm not supposed to do that here, and I often have been accused of not being succinct, but there are so many things and there's so many messages and there's so many stories. So actually selecting them was probably the hardest part for me.
EB: Yeah, a long storied career here and, certainly certain moments you could really pinpoint throughout your career, even just with those challenges that you had to overcome and some of that. I'm sure you could do an entire book on, you know, just overcoming that pandemic and all that. And we're on Zoom right now, I'm sure you're getting throwbacks to those, Zoom videos and the video messages that you would send out throughout with the updates that everyone tuned in and loved.
So there's certainly a great number of stories in this book, a lot of anecdotes, you know, about your prolific career. But what's, what's one story you tell in the book do you think might stick with readers the most?
RF: Well I hope they all will. Of course. And of course the ones that I wasn't able to tell, and thank you for not dwelling quite so much on the bad stuff because there was lots of it. But overall, I've been amazingly lucky. It's been a terrific career and I've been fortunate to work with some amazing people and amazing ships and everything else.
Probably, one of the things that was difficult for us as we worked our way through, it was the whole concept of what initially started out as an atrium. And then became what became the promenade.
And the two problems that we had were, this was an enormous, as many people saw, a waste of space you're spending. Staggering amounts of money to build just openings that have nothing in them. You could accomplish all the technical requirements without having all that empty space above you. And so, you know, getting everybody on board and achieving alignment that's what we should do. And that our North Star was providing something exceptional to our guests. So, from an economic point of view, and then the technical challenges of building what was seen by the engineers as a big hole in the middle of ship, I think that's something which was an interesting process to go through, and I think, I hope, many of my readers will find that interesting as well.
EB: And I think that fits to the title and just the mantra that you guys had, Royal Caribbean and that open is delivering the wow when you first walk in. It's wow, you know, on so many of these ships that you guys have, and it really kind of changed the game for the industry as well too. You know, as soon as you step on board, like you want that wow right in your face.
RF: And nobody would build a ship without an atrium. So, yes, it's very exciting to have been part of that.
EB: Yeah. I do have to bring it up though. The blimp, I think that's one story I think of a few people will go, wow. Or what? And like, hadn't heard that before, type of thing. So you could talk a little bit about the blimp story.
RF: The blimp story, yeah. Um, so when we were designing Oasis, we looked at all the things we could add, and you can't put everything you want on, but one idea we had was to have a blimp that could fly above the ship and behind the ship 3, 4, 500 feet in the air. And we designed it, it's enormous. It requires special factory. We tested it out first in computer modeling, we did tracks where we dragged it behind a truck on an old runway. And then finally we were taking it out on a sea trial and trying it on the ship. And I actually got to go up in it and it was amazing to go up way up into the sky and see.
We were off the coast of Sweden, the Swedish coast, and the ship, oh, it was, it was really remarkable. And I thought we had a winner. During the night, we hadn't tied the balloon, the blimp down properly because it was just a test. And it broke its lines and flew off. And the next morning the captain got a call from The Swedish Air Force saying our blimp was in their traffic lanes, and would we mind if they shot it down? And I don't know how you answer that question, but fortunately it started to descend on its own. But, I guess we figured that the blimp idea maybe wasn't right at that time. We didn't need it. The ship was so spectacular without it. We were, we were fine.
EB: Indeed. So, yeah. So a lot of great stories that I encourage everyone, to get this book and you will enjoy reading that. I think some of the hardcore cruisers out there will find the details on Carnival Corp being a contender to purchase some majority stake in Royal back in 1988. Some of the details there the asking price of that, I think you'll find pretty interesting when you dive into the book on that.
RF: You know, Eric, on that, I think one of the things that's interesting is that the price of the company at that time was $550 million. Now the company is worth 90 billion, so it's been quite, it's been quite a road.
EB: Yeah, quite a growth, trajectory there since ‘88 to hear 20 25, 90 billion. Yeah. Big B on that, on that one too. So, speaking of the eighties though, you know, the image back then was kind of often for the newlywed and nearly dead as some people like to have joked, but what would you say was that “aha moment” for you when you realized that you could successfully reposition cruising for everyone, for families, thrill seekers, and everyone.
RF: Well, first of all, I don't think there was an aha moment. The company was really founded by Ed Stefan with the idea that we could expand and we did a lot of study. This is actually how I got into it, and the more we looked at it, the more we saw how this was really something that appealed to everybody.
And it's embarrassing to admit, but I had never actually taken a cruise. And so we went, my wife and I went on a cruise. We went on the shortest cruise we could go on because we still didn't think it was really for people like us. We knew it was going to be popular, but really we were different. And it turns out we had such an amazing time. So I think that helped crystallize. All the market research and all the study and all the thought that we had done. So if there was one moment, I guess it was that, but it was really an evolution of just studying how much people enjoyed what they did and what the potential was for giving them an even better experience.
EB: Love that. Where was that first cruise to?
RF: First cruise was to Nassau.
EB: There you go. Yeah. And my how that has changed as well. Now you, everyone wants the cruise to the private islands these days for sure. So, you do talk a lot about culture and you mentioned a little earlier in the interview here that culture that can be intangible. So how did you as a CEO measure the health and success of the Royal Caribbean culture? Did you have any key metrics that you would look at?
RF: So I, I think it's interesting that you mention that because culture isn't, isn't something you can measure often. It's very intangible. Uh, you know what it is, but you may not be able to explain it. I think when I look at our culture and I'm just in awe of the people and the way they work together and the passion that they bring to the job, and I'm not sure you can articulate it. One measure is they have to like what they do, they have to be engaged in it. They have to get up in the morning and say, oh my God, I'm, I'm looking forward to going to work.
And oh my God, when I get there, I've got these great ideas and this is going to happen and that's going to happen. So, me, if I had to go to metrics, I would probably look at our employee engagement, which we made part of our bonus plan early on, because it's so important if, if the people aren't liking what they do, if they aren't loving what they do, they're not going to be able to produce that Wow that has differentiated the Royal Caribbean Group's brands.
EB: What would you say was one of the hardest parts of being a CEO? Because you're, you're leading such a massive group of team, you're, studying the culture things, people are doing well, but you know, there are some hard parts of being a leader. What was one of those hard parts for you?
RF: I think probably one of the hardest things for me, maybe I'll mention two of them. And just in terms of personal pain, not everybody likes the culture. Not everybody enjoys being part of that. And not everybody thrives in it. And that, that always was painful if, if something wasn't working out with someone. But I would think actually when I look back, we had an awful lot of difficult times over the years. You mentioned them, I won't repeat them, but we had a lot of very difficult, challenging times. And also we made a lot of mistakes. There were a lot of times when I did something and looked back and said, how could I have done that? And I think one of the hardest things for me was to learn not to look back. I screwed up. That was yesterday. Don’t dwell on it. Move on now. What's right for going forward? And it was, I think that was probably one of the hardest things for me was always saying what's ahead of us, not what's behind us. Doesn't mean you don't learn from your mistakes, but where our mantra was continuous improvement. How do we get better? And that's looking forward, not back.
EB: Yeah, I think that's great advice, especially for all, whether you're a supplier or an advisor or just a regular traveler tuning in right now, you know, you mess up, just move on, keep going forward.
RF: Well, and in fact, that was part of why I wrote the book was because this isn't just for people in the cruise industry isn't even just for people who were in business. I think many of these things that I learned and that others showed me while I was at Royal Caribbean are, are powerful in any organizational structure.
EB: How hard was it for you to choose your successor and that process?
RF: You know, I guess that was one of the things if I look back, that I would be very most proud of. Jason is an extraordinary leader. We've worked together for 20 years, and he is, he's inspiring. He is, methodical and thoughtful. He has good in instincts. Killer instincts and every other way. So that actually when I look back and I say, what am I most proud of? And, we always have things that we're proud of and other things that we hope interviewers won't mention. One of them is the, the people. It really is. It's the people. It's the people, it's the people. And Jason and the team are just so amazing and it just fills me with pride. And so, I look back and say that was, that transition has worked well. Jason continues to knock it out of the park and keep getting better. And I look forward to every day seeing it get even better.
EB: Yeah, you guys had such a great back and forth too on Star of the Seas earlier this summer with the panel presentations you guys talked about, just the leadership and the back and forth. It seems like you guys got along extremely well and just have the friendship there is, you know, off stage type of stuff. I left that audience and I was talking to a lot of travel advisors in that, and just the excitement they had about, you know, not only just Royal Caribbean, but just hearing from you guys and, and the leadership that you passed on, that was impressive.
RF: It was, it was, it was good to see. 20 years of friendship, and it is a friendship as well as a professional relationship. And it's terrific and it warms my heart.
EB: Well, as we talk about the cruise industry as a whole though, how do you see it evolving in the years ahead?
RF: So, I think first of all, I thrived every moment while I was in charge. But I also understand there needs to be one leader at any point in time. And that is now Jason. And so, as I did when we had the back and forth, which was fun actually, on board Star of the Seas, I really turned that to Jason to answer. But I think overall, what you're seeing in our industry is a continued evolution of this concept that it's not a cruise we're selling, it is a vacation, and it's both on the ship and on the land. You know, one of the things people said when we kept bringing out these new ships with more activities and more things, does the ship become the destination. And it was a frequent question I got asked and I always answered it very strongly in the negative. The ship is not the destination. The ship needs to be wonderful, but so does the destination - the two work together. And you see that continuing to evolve. You can see, and I think you will continue to see it. Jason's actually put in an interesting, I love the phraseology they've come up over the last couple of years now with the phrase, instead of vacation of a lifetime, it’s a lifetime of vacations. And I think that really does help encapsulate what we've been searching for and continue to search for, and I hope will always continue to search for, we always want to be better. We'll be better next year. We'll be better in five years. But it’s not a cruise vacation, it's a vacation, where the cruise is an important part.
EB: I love that. I think that's a great perspective too, especially for some of our advisors listening in that you often hear about, you know, oh, the ship is a destination of it itself, but it goes beyond that.
And yes, it has to be great, but that's a unique way I think advisors can, you know, position cruising in general out to their clientele.
RF: So, and, and I always try and emphasize that to our travel advisors, that they really can give this and this becomes one of a series of choices. And that it's not just the ship. It's the ship and everything it offers.
EB: Yeah. Any additional advice you'd give to our travel advisor viewers here on kinda making sure they deliver that wow in all that they do for their customers and their business?
RF: I think they've always been an important part of Royal Caribbean Group's success. We have always appreciated that and hopefully work with them. And you know, it's a two-way street. It's a little bit like. The way I look towards our own people, because I think the travel advisors are an often an extension of who we are, and so delivering that wow, making sure that you're always focused on the future, that you, you have a goal to get to. It's not this sale, it's how do I get so that we are providing something to our customers, that they need. And that advice, that expertise is something that is unique in our industry and particularly valuable for cruise passengers.
EB: Yeah, and we can't forget the suppliers out there tuning in. So for anyone working in the travel industry, whether it's cruise, hotels, air tours, et cetera, and they're just looking to grow in the industry, what would be your advice to them?
RF: I think again, part of our success has been the partnership that we have formed in so many areas, and that includes the suppliers, whether it's suppliers to a ship or suppliers on a destination or whatever it is. It's a partnership. And if you look at it as a zero sum game, I get a higher price or they get a lower price, that's not going to move the needle forward in a good way. But if you look at it as a power, as a partnership where if we're successful, if we're both successful, we'll both benefit. And we've seen that over and over again.
We've had some of, some terrific relationships and whether it the shipyards, which are of course have been phenomenal to us throughout our history to whether it's suppliers or even the small things, all of these things matter. Everything has to go well. We're providing a holistic vacation, and all the pieces need to work.
EB: Thank you so much, Richard, for taking time out of your busy schedule here to jump on and talk about your book and your career. Everyone tuning in, delivering the wow, it goes on sale October 21st. So you can pre-order that on Amazon in the link in description below. We'll have that there. Thank you for everything, Richard.
RF: Eric, thank you very much. I've always enjoyed you and your magazine and, appreciate you taking the time this morning.
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