NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Within the travel industry, it's hard to abruptly stop business amid a crisis, but it's even harder to restart it, according to Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line.
In a constant state of change, pushing through adversity means having a leader who focuses on resilience and what they can control, as well as communication and making the most out of downtime, said Delta Air Lines Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer Michelle Horn, who joined the airline in 2021.
"If you're somebody who looks forward, typically [you] look to a point or to a general vision. In this case, we've had to do it really differently," she said during a panel titled "Beyond hotels: Fresh perspectives from the travel industry" at the 14th annual Hotel Data Conference. "Since we don't actually know month to month what's going to happen, we've had to change our stance in three ways."
Duffy said the cruise industry was completely shut down for 16 months in the U.S. at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"As Carnival Corporation, we operate nine brands. While Carnival Cruise Line is the flagship, we have over 40,000 employees. We, for the corporation, had 75,000 crew members [and 300,000 guests] on ships at the moment when we were told to stop [operating]," she said.
The next step was getting people back home from various places in the world while prioritizing health and safety, she said. Once guests disembarked, Carnival maintained its ships with minimal crew — about 125 people on every ship across the corporation.
"That's a very expensive proposition and it also was very difficult for the crew that remained," she said, adding that the thousands of members who needed to be sent home brought another set of challenges.
"We started the process by trying to put people on planes; that stopped pretty quickly. Then we used ships to bring people home to countries around the world. There were some crew that were on the ships for over a year before their own countries allowed them to come back in," Duffy said.
Improving Communication
Through those challenges, Duffy said she learned that communication with team members could not stop.
"It was all about communication, and how do you as a leader appreciate the fact that you have to keep communicating even when you have nothing new to say?" she said. "What I've heard since, is that messaging and communication made all the difference in being able to have people look past what was happening.
"Restarting was a lot harder than stopping, and I thought stopping was hard," she added.
Horn said Delta built a "burnout index" for its internal teams, which helped them form closer direct lines with each other.
Planning for Uncertainty
Part of Horn's daily job includes planning for uncertainties, which includes thinking about best- and worst-case scenarios and what can be done to weather challenges while taking care of people, she said.
"That's the mindset. We know where we want to go, we're going to do everything we can to get there with a whole team, but we also want to make sure the choices we're making make us resilient," she added.
One of the most challenging things for Duffy during times of uncertainty was taking a pause and not making decisions too quickly.
"Things were so fluid. [We had] to hold decisions and plan loosely rather than as firmly as we once did," she added. "For people, it's very difficult for them not to know."
Duffy admitted that sometimes she didn't have all the answers, which requires being humble and transparent and explaining potential scenarios and outcomes.
Because Carnival wasn't operating at the capacity it once was, Duffy said the company took time to improve the ships and technology as well as employee development and training.
Making People Feel Comfortable
Paying attention to new sources of data has also been a key component in moving forward, Horn said. But not all decisions can be made off data, she added.
In 2020, Delta decided to block the middle seats on aircrafts. As of 2021, it has reinstated selling the middle seats.
"There was no analysis that was going to tell us that was a good idea. [We felt] it is the right thing to do for our people, it is the right thing to do for our customers," she said. "On the flip side, then there was the question of when do we unblock it."
That decision came down to whether customers felt comfortable and what portion of them had access to a COVID-19 vaccine, she said.
"We ended up going out to a lot of our most frequent flyers and asking them if they had access to a vaccine at this point. When that got to a number we were comfortable with, that's the point at which we reinstated selling the middle seat," Horn said.
Duffy said Carnival was concerned about its crew members' access to vaccines. Through the state of Florida and University of Texas, the company was able to obtain vaccines for every crew member, which allowed them to show customers that health and safety were a priority.
"In this environment, it really was leaning into our values and what really was our true north," she said. "While we knew we would get back to operating, in the meantime what were we going to do to take care of our people, so that when we could get back to operating not only would they be there, would they be ready?"
Retraining the Workforce
Horn said Delta right now has 100,000 employees across its organization, which she said is considered fully staffed.
The challenge now is much of the teams dealt with an environment "that was quiet until it wasn't," she said. Delta is having to build back employee experience and reorient them to the "customer engine that was revving for 18 months and not able to open up and then just did."
Duffy said Carnival opened an office in the Philippines, which includes a human resources team for training and leverages a partnership with a Maritime academy.
"Instead of having people get generic training in hotels or food and beverage, we're able to develop specific for Carnival. We also have a facility in the Netherlands, which has all of the simulators; all of our captains, our chiefs, our senior officers pre-COVID [had] to go through there at least once a year," she said, adding Carnival has reopened that and sent members through there as soon as they we were able to.
Similarly, Delta ensures all members go through a retraining process. This includes bringing small groups of front-line staff together at a time for leadership sessions and team bonding. The last time Delta did something to this scale was coming out of its bankruptcy in 2007, Horn said.