Royal Caribbean’s rollout of RFID wristbands will be gradual

Royal Caribbean RFID wristbandFORT LAUDERDALE — Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. President Adam Goldstein said it will be several years before the Sea Pass wristbands being used for room keys on Quantum of the Seas can be rolled out fleetwide.

Goldstein said the radio-frequency identification (RFID) wristbands are simple, but they go hand-in-hand with a new shipboard property management system that takes a fair amount of time to install.

“The next-generation embarkation and the RFID bands will kind of follow that process,” Goldstein said in a speech at the CruiseWorld conference, a Travel Weekly event.

Royal Caribbean will proceed ship by ship with the installations. He did not say which would be the next ship in line for Sea Pass.

Goldstein said that older ships such as Majesty of the Seas that look their age next to Quantum have been given extended life by adding newer features in scheduled drydocks.

“We’ve found across the boCruiseWorld - Adam Goldsteinard — and this is industrywide — that we’ve been able to inject a lot more features from the newer ships onto the older ships than probably any of us thought possible.”

He also noted that RCCL has six brands and that older Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises ships such as Majesty of the Seas have traditionally migrated to its other, primarily European, brands.

Goldstein said pressure on concessionaires to be more efficient has resulted in smaller footprints for areas like the photo gallery on Quantum. That has freed up more space for a variety of extra features that make the ship more exciting overall, he said.

CruiseWorldGoldstein said he’s never been a big fan of the contemporary-premium-upper premium-luxury continuum that many use to label the market segments of the cruise business, and that the edges of those categories are increasingly blurring into each other.

“If you’re in a loft suite on Oasis of the Seas, you’re in a pretty luxurious product,” he said.

“Very often our bigger brands are the second choice for couples that are normally cruising on small luxury ships,” Goldstein said. He said those passengers want the attributes of a large ship with all of the luxury amenities of a small one. “It is an interesting marketing challenge.”

Quantum to use wrist bands instead of key cards

By Tom Stieghorst

Guests on Royal Caribbean International’s Quantum of the Seas will be issued wristbands with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in place of the standard issue key cards, which will be used for cabin access, payment and other traditional key card functions.

The wristbands can also be used to navigate the ship, said Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. Chairman Richard Fain, who hosted a live webcast from the ship’s construction site in Germany to announce the innovation.

The webcast will include a chat with former New York Times technology columnist David Pogue, who now works for Yahoo! Those interested can ask questions via Twitter under the hashtag #QuantumoftheSeas.

It was one of half a dozen technology upgrades on the Quantum that promise to make cruising simpler, easier and more hassle-free, Fain said.

Another eye-catching technology will be a robotic bartender which will tend a new venue, the Bionic Bar. Guests will place orders via tablets and then watch the robotic bartenders mix their cocktails.

Quantum will also use RFID to enable guests to track their baggage in real time after they drop it off before the cruise, and after they deliver it to housekeeping on departing the ship. In addition, guests will be able to generate their boarding documents online and upload a photo ID to get digital boarding credentials that will shorten the check-in process. Fain said the process will go from sidewalk to ship in 10 minutes and eliminate the traditional check-in counter and the associated lines.

Quantum is also scheduled to be the second ship to fully utilize the O3B satellite system for telecommunications access, which is expected to dramatically increase Internet speeds. The extra connectivity will enable the Quantum to offer a live global video gaming suite in its new SeaPlex activities area.

The O3B system has been in testing on the Oasis of the Seas and is expected to be fully deployed first on the Allure of the Seas by October.