Carnival UK
Moving from concept to pilot at record pace with the UK’s largest cruise line
The brief
Carnival UK is part of Carnival Corporation, the biggest travel and leisure company in the world. In the UK they are best known as Cunard and P&O Cruises, Britain’s biggest cruise line. Both brands have over 180 years of heritage, and over a million people take a holiday with them every year.
The organisation is embarking on an ambitious transformation journey, putting digital at the heart of their strategy to create unforgettable holiday happiness. As part of this journey, a new Vice President of Digital was appointed in late 2023, with the remit to radically improve Carnival’s digital offering and capability. The Carnival team approached Loomery for support in early 2024, with a dual brief to accelerate progress on digital priorities and to increase user centricity and agility across the organisation.
Project summary
Loomery worked with the Carnival digital team throughout 2024 to move rapidly from vision to working pilot app. Our team began by establishing a ‘North Star’ Vision of the digital experience for customers and guests across P&O and Cunard brands. With the North Star defined, we prototyped key elements of the journey including a modern alternative to a passenger’s daily itinerary and critical moments prior to and at the start of a holiday, including preparing to sail, getting on board, and settling once on the ship. We then built a pilot app for new customers going through this pre-boarding journey to gather their feedback.
Project in numbers
4 Weeks
To build v0.1 of an iOS pilot app
5 Prototypes
To test, learn and accelerate the design
‘We brought Loomery to help us with a period of rapid iteration, to go from an idea to a concept to a prototype really quickly, because we knew that the value that that would drive to helping people understand the power of agile ways of working would be enormously valuable, and it's already proving that it is.’
— Emma Smith, Vice President Digital
Defining a North Star Vision by ‘making’
With a new digital leadership team in place it was essential to clarify the role of digital in the Carnival customer experience. The business already had many existing digital channels for sales, onboarding and servicing customers’ needs on board, and a wealth of understanding and knowledge of where these could be improved.
The primary challenge was to synthesise these opportunities, then bring them to life in a way that excited colleagues across the business and was respectful of the foundational differences between the P&O and Cunard brands. Through a combination of expert interviews, collaborative workshops and desk research we quickly identified a feature set that embodied the experience the Carnival team wanted to deliver, spanning the experience from discovery, planning, purchase, holiday and returning home.
Early in the project the team visualised these features as concepts to gather feedback from Carnival team members and customers. These concepts rapidly evolved into high fidelity designs and a tappable prototype to bring the experience to life.
Defining a North Star Vision by ‘making’
With a new digital leadership team in place it was essential to clarify the role of digital in the Carnival customer experience. The business already had many existing digital channels for sales, onboarding and servicing customers’ needs on board, and a wealth of understanding and knowledge of where these could be improved.
The primary challenge was to synthesise these opportunities, then bring them to life in a way that excited colleagues across the business and was respectful of the foundational differences between the P&O and Cunard brands. Through a combination of expert interviews, collaborative workshops and desk research we quickly identified a feature set that embodied the experience the Carnival team wanted to deliver, spanning the experience from discovery, planning, purchase, holiday and returning home.
Early in the project the team visualised these features as concepts to gather feedback from Carnival team members and customers. These concepts rapidly evolved into high fidelity designs and a tappable prototype to bring the experience to life.
Zooming in on priority features
This ‘North Star’ definition and Carnival’s extensive customer feedback uncovered a number of moments in the customer journey with marked opportunity for improvement. One example was Horizon, a printed daily programme of events printed thousands of times and put under the door of each cruise guest each morning.
This paper-based approach has a number of downsides, with static rather than live information, high operational costs, and crucially a missed opportunity to drive users into digital channels with upsell and cross-sell potential.
To fast track progress, the Loomery team prototyped digital solutions that brought the daily programme into a digital format, feeding the best solutions into the Carnival UK digital team’s roadmap.
Zooming in on priority features
This ‘North Star’ definition and Carnival’s extensive customer feedback uncovered a number of moments in the customer journey with marked opportunity for improvement. One example was Horizon, a printed daily programme of events printed thousands of times and put under the door of each cruise guest each morning.
This paper-based approach has a number of downsides, with static rather than live information, high operational costs, and crucially a missed opportunity to drive users into digital channels with upsell and cross-sell potential.
To fast track progress, the Loomery team prototyped digital solutions that brought the daily programme into a digital format, feeding the best solutions into the Carnival UK digital team’s roadmap.
Pilot to test, learn and accelerate
With the North Star set, and increasing momentum around the new digital initiatives, it was time to start Discovery on the less well defined areas of the customer experience. Getting new-to-cruises customers ready and excited ahead of their holiday was an area the Carnival team had identified as important to delivering a brilliant holiday experience, together with getting them settled and up-to-speed once on board.
Research showed this part of the journey was where new customers felt most uncertain and anxious, resulting in a high volume of customer support centre enquiries. Opportunities were being missed in helping customers make the most of the wonderful activities, restaurants and bars available as soon as they walked up the gang plank.
Pilot to test, learn and accelerate
With the North Star set, and increasing momentum around the new digital initiatives, it was time to start Discovery on the less well defined areas of the customer experience. Getting new-to-cruises customers ready and excited ahead of their holiday was an area the Carnival team had identified as important to delivering a brilliant holiday experience, together with getting them settled and up-to-speed once on board.
Research showed this part of the journey was where new customers felt most uncertain and anxious, resulting in a high volume of customer support centre enquiries. Opportunities were being missed in helping customers make the most of the wonderful activities, restaurants and bars available as soon as they walked up the gang plank.
A cross-functional team working closely with Carnival’s digital leadership mapped this journey and explored the greatest opportunities to a) resolve pain points and b) maximise engagement and capture additional commercial opportunities.
Over four weeks our team built a pilot app which addressed each of these pain points and opportunities. The pilot app helps customers consider the essential things to do before heading on holiday; suggests what to pack and what to leave at home; features the entertainment, food and bar options on board; helps customers get settled and set up for their holiday once on board; and provides tips and tricks for navigating the ship.
Working in tight daily cycles, demoing to Carnival leaders weekly we delivered the full feature set to a high level of user experience and code quality. The app is live and ready to be tested with customers on P&Os newest ship, Arvia, later this year.
A cross-functional team working closely with Carnival’s digital leadership mapped this journey and explored the greatest opportunities to a) resolve pain points and b) maximise engagement and capture additional commercial opportunities.
Over four weeks our team built a pilot app which addressed each of these pain points and opportunities. The pilot app helps customers consider the essential things to do before heading on holiday; suggests what to pack and what to leave at home; features the entertainment, food and bar options on board; helps customers get settled and set up for their holiday once on board; and provides tips and tricks for navigating the ship.
Working in tight daily cycles, demoing to Carnival leaders weekly we delivered the full feature set to a high level of user experience and code quality. The app is live and ready to be tested with customers on P&Os newest ship, Arvia, later this year.
‘‘I loved the pace of delivery - it was like opening a new gift every day!’
— Sarah Curtis, Director Digital Strategy & Guest Experience
‘‘I loved the pace of delivery - it was like opening a new gift every day!’
— Sarah Curtis, Director Digital Strategy & Guest Experience
Conclusion
Through 2024 Loomery helped Carnival to clearly express their vision for digital, then prototyped key aspects of it at pace and built a pilot to test a critical portion of the new digital journey with customers. By working side by side with the Carnival team we shortened feedback loops and set a faster pace for the organisation, while embedding a greater standard of customer-centricity into digital design and development.
“Loomery's expertise has proven to be of immense value to MOO in our journey of discovery, aiding us significantly in advancing our strategy and roadmap and identifying the most important outcomes for our customers. Our collaboration with Loomery has been exceptionally seamless, with them perfectly integrated into our team and working closely with our internal stakeholders. Their ability to help us visualise, test, and validate the desired customer experience has filled us with excitement and confidence for the road ahead. Thank you Loomery!”
— Noha Ghazouani, Director of Product at MOO
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