Why It Costs $1 Million Per Day To Run One Of The World’s Biggest Cruise Ships | Big Business

Royal Caribbean Symphony Of The Seas is like a Giant floating city and its residents over 6 000 passengers a week it can cost over a million dollars a day to keep it all running even though each Cruiser pays as little as a hundred dollars daily so to make a profit the cruise line and all its crew have to be really efficient it takes a staff of 2400 people hustling to keep it all operating smoothly so we covered day and night Productions the team moves supplies along secret crew member-only areas of the ship from cramp ship kitchens chefs pump out 30 000 meals every single day foreign a bustling trash room handles all the waste and the captain's Bridge keeps the ship moving safely like wow really crazy the Productions are super massive we go behind the scenes to see what it takes to sail one of the world's largest cruise ships Symphony Of The Seas was the globe's biggest ship for four years running in 2022 The Wonder of the Seas took the title beating out its older sister because it's slightly heavier back in late 2019 we boarded Symphony for a week to film all the happenings inside the voyage started on a Saturday this is turnaround day passengers disembark so new ones can board we don't get people in and out uh gradually we just do everything at once and every room is turned over as you may imagine it's a big job to clean 2759 rooms on turnaround day trucks carrying 500 pallets of new inventory arrive at the Port of Miami the busiest cruising port in the world among these Provisions over 600 000 pounds of food and beverages that get loaded on to deck two this is basically a place that you would not like to be on on turnaround day when we are loading it's busy busy super busy it's estimated the top three cruise lines in the world will spend an estimated 2.3 billion dollars on food and drink in 2023. supplies have to be perfectly planned for this seven-day Cruise our ability to manage the things with our own resources needs to be much bigger than in a hotel we're at Sea there's no option and all this has to be loaded onto the ship in just nine hours any delay in our operation can hamper the sail away of the ship which is again a big logistic requirement by 4 30 the ship is ready to set sail moving the ship is a combined effort between the bridge and the engine control room the bridge handles steering and navigating maybe only 10 percent of my job is being on the bridge having control of the ship the rest of it I'm managing a huge huge operation and the engine room provides the power I always say that when there's a problem on board the captain called me I never called the captain four bow thrusters move the front of the ship side to side and three electric azipod propellers turned 360 Degrees to pull the ship instead of push it six giant engines power it all we have everybody on board then he will request to have propulsion and start a clusters and get ready for departure so the engine's almost ready so we have one and six online now Captain Sullivan can maneuver out of the port here we are on the branch in the cockpit this is where we do the navigation at Sea we've got multiple displays giving us information about the uh the ship with the course the speed The Heading is you have an electronic chart display With Our Roots already planned and we can see exactly where we are at any time Symphony Of The Seas is registered and sales under the flag of the Bahamas because of the passenger Services Act of 1886 no foreign flagships can move passengers between two U.S ports to avoid the 200 per passenger fine any Royal Caribbean ship leaving the U.S has to stop at another country since this cruise is headed to Puerto Rico from Miami they had to slip St Martin and the Bahamas into the itinerary on the other side of the ship passengers are getting settled into their rooms Ocean View Cabins started a thousand dollars per person for the week going up to 85 000 for the tricked out ultimate family Suite we have a room for every wallet on this ship everything good meaning Hotel manager Fernando Jorge has to cater to all kinds of tastes if you put this jacket on with four Stripes you'll be a celebrity too Cruise Lines Bank on the fact that they have a captive audience for a week they make their profit from keeping passengers moving through the ship dropping cash on onboard purchases like alcohol casino games and Specialty restaurants Fernando says the ship's design helps unconventional cruise ships there's only one block with a big pool in the middle this ship has seven distinct neighborhoods with their own themes and activities a big Central Park sits in the middle and 17 public and private Pools and Hot Tubs dot the rest of the ship the average cost to build a new ship is 650 million Royal Caribbean spent more than double that on the Symphony of the Seas Fernando's goal is to control how passengers move through the ship from their rooms to shows to dining Halls so no one part is too overcrowded they move around freely to their own will and doing what they want but we up to a certain extent the flow is designed that at any given point you do not feel that you are with another 6 500 people on board the ship's design also helps in isolating zones in case of an emergency and controlling covet 19. passengers that test positive for covid can be quarantined down on Deck 3. so this is a core this is a cover quarantine you guys want deck three thing is they leave these disinfectant bottles all our trash it leaves bio biohazard bags our um meals our room service anything like that we put it in those bags hand sanitizer masks you have covered they sent you the cabin room service is pretty much complimentary so they are not directly handing you the food they're putting it down then you pick it up and stuff like that in December 2021 50 people on board tested positive for covid they were able to isolate in their cabins every crew member is trained on coveted procedures and sailing safety Royal Caribbean is Incorporated in Liberia labor laws there are a lot looser than in mainland United States or Europe it allows Royal Caribbean to hire a crew from all over the world and keep them working long hours for 3 to 12 month contracts half of the staff is part of Fernando's culinary team their job feeding all those passengers their three four eight meals a day you have to calculate that is breakfast lunch and dinner plus snacks blues at night Blues all 24-hour food all around and that never stops ship kitchens run 24 7 manned by a culinary team of more than a thousand people they dish out over 30 000 meals every single day and they do it all from compact kitchens on a rocking ship so how does all this food make it to the plate Jared's in charge of ordering all the food for the ship's 23 different restaurants every week Jared's got a one million dollar shopping budget all of that is just for seven days of food sometimes Jarrett will tweak his orders based on who's coming aboard more kids means more chicken fingers that's how the operation runs so we monitor it on a daily basis what has been used what has not been used and then we adjust our orders accordingly but by and large being in Miami having the same number of people it's almost the same every Cruise once on board everything is moved along the ship's secret Highway this is I-95 and it runs the entire length of the ship on Deck 2. we separate all the stores to the different locations that they are supposed to go we have about 20 different store rooms divided into freezers fridges walk-in fridges and rice doors Seafood meat vegetables and fruit are all divided and stored in separate fridges if you come to what's the end of the cruise this box will be almost empty with a few fruits that are needed for two more days which we keep as backup stock there are also six freezers that's where the 700 pounds of ice cream that'll be eaten each week are stored dry goods are stored down on deck one full of spices full of chocolate in this store room coffee it's nice to be in this store haha an elevator gets the food downstairs Jared's team checks all of the food for quality control every day if produce is ripening faster than expected they try to work it into another meal for example overripe broccoli could go into broccoli cheddar soup instead of being tossed once inventory is stored restaurants on upper decks put in food orders with Jared chefs will come downstairs pick up their order and cart it away to be cooked that's where this guy comes in any food on board is beautiful shape anything you eat it is my responsibility whatever you have beautiful potato fry is my rice is my Pate is my pastry is my Sala shrink whatever you eat it is my responsibility three host team of 280 chefs run the kitchens 24 7. each Chef Works 10 to 12 hour dates contracts typically last four months without a single day off some of the people started working for eight o'clock in the morning all the way to two o'clock take a break come back I can find your clothes feed him by 9 30. then other group will start to work in Tango friend and I all the way to 10 o'clock in the morning so we cover day and night Productions chefs on board cook up nearly 100 different menus every week all the menus are developed at Royal Caribbean's Miami headquarters and every week chefs stick to the same rotation of menus cooking up everything from racks of lamb to hand rolled sushi the food has to be diverse to match Symphony Of The Seas International passengers vacationing at all kinds of price points we try to please everybody I told me should everybody find what you're looking for all the cooking happens in 36 kitchens the word galleys as they're called on a ship there are 12 specialty restaurants on board costing up to fifty dollars a person and each of those restaurants has its own small Galley in those tight quarters chefs crank out the same menu every day at Jamie's Italian it's fresh pasta at hooked it's over 2 000 oysters shocked per cruise but the largest amount of food is reserved for the main dining room which spans three decks and serves up to six thousand people a night eating here is included in your ticket before food heads up to the main galleys it starts in one of the prep kitchens off I-95 there's a butcher shop good morning these are the gentlemen looking after all the meat cuts the butcher goes through about 15 000 pounds of beef and 9 700 pounds of chicken each week there's also a veggie Cutting Room and a fish thawing box Lobster is the most popular dish in Maine dining the ship goes through about 2100 pounds of lobster tails every week finally the food heads upstairs to the main Galley the ship's biggest kitchen is broken down by categories desserts bread cold food and hot food and dessert chefs whip up cakes chocolates in a hundred different types of pastries over in the bread bakery they make 40 different kinds of bread from all over the world all from scratch but the real hustle comes just before the dinner rush six thousand hungry passengers in the main dining room remember Rico before dinner prep starts he has to approve all the dishes rijo tries each dish and gives his critiques don't forget beautiful beautiful we don't have any challenge so we're ready to go that's great okay thank you so much and thank you so much and look forward to a beautiful night tonight thank you have a beautiful day bye chefs take his notes and get cooking chefs can see a tally of each dish ordered up on screens the system also keeps track of how much inventory is used in the cold room salads and appetizers like Carpaccio come together in the hot room chefs dish out soups sauces sides and mains we have the two kinds of chefs chefs working here on the line which is close to me plating up and checks on the stove poking so everything we do is in patch cooking so basically the toilet steak there we pass it over to the past the person on the bus is plating it up to the requested temperature that means always so the guests are getting fresh food and from an operational point we don't have any overproduction finally waiters deliver those dishes hungry passengers out in Maine dining between the chef's inventory crew waders and dishwashers it takes a team of 1085 people to keep this massive operation going together they cook nearly 11 million meals each year and they're doing it all on a moving ship the ship is rocking then all the equipment is built to the ship rocket then in whatever moment maybe they should move somebody don't put one break in one in one trolley and you see the trolling flying away and happen that's why all the cooks always be the attention with that but if crew members are doing their job right passengers won't even know any of it's happening they'll just get back to eating their eighth meal of the day what happens to all that leftover food and other waste on the ship well it's handled by the ship's waste management team but there aren't any garbage trucks here to scoop it up and take it away we're at Sea obviously and since waste can't and shouldn't just be dumped in the ocean well what do cruise ships do with all of it this is something the industry has been dealing with for years Carnival Cruise Line is coming clean about polluting oceans Princess Cruises was fined 40 million dollars in 2016 for illegal dumping and Carnival got hit with a 20 million dollar fine in 2019 for disposing of plastic waste in the ocean Carnival corporations issues really brought the need for better technology so that these ships can operate more efficiently cruise lines have been working on systems to purify water and deal with waste inside ships up until now these types of options weren't available all this Tech was custom built for the Symphony of the Seas the company says it's a zero landfill ship which means it uses everything from recycling to water filtration to deal with its own waste and this guy is in charge of making sure no single water bottle is unaccounted for welcome to wayson recycling center we're down on Deck two that secret crew only area of the ship crew members check all the ship's trash cans for recyclables and bring them down here for Alex's team to handle despite being the only waste facility on this massive ship it's surprisingly quiet Alex said the busiest time is in the morning when things are unpackaged for the day this is the waste streams that we have every waste stream has its own way of handling it there are separate teams to deal with each incoming recyclable glass cardboard plastic and metal this is our generator room so we have two incinerators one and two this area is man 24 hours a day we have 10 crew members who are working here five in the morning and five in the evening crew members separate glass into colors green brown and white okay this is the byproduct of it after we crush it they can process upwards of 13 000 pounds of glass for a week-long cruise all the small glass pieces are stored in bins until the ship docks plastic goes through this massive compactor even though the ship's gotten rid of plastic straws it still relies on bottled water because for health and safety reasons no cruise ship is allowed to have water fountains so every week they Crush about 528 gallons of water bottles we are compacting the cardboard over there throughout the day cardboard is stacked up in this machine called a Baler once it's full it's all compressed into bundles and used aluminum cans well they're sent through this Baler the machine squeezes them down into big cubes which are then stored in a fridge just off the waste room this area is actually for the items that can produce smell the garbage and that smell could get pretty bad the waste is stored for up to seven days at a time until the ship docks back in Miami while the plastic aluminum paper and glass go to cycling partner facilities in 2018 Royal Caribbean recycled 43.7 million pounds of waste and any rebates earned from these recycling programs go back to the employee retirement fund the cruise line is hoping that it's a nice incentive for employees to bring recycling down from their own crew cabins so what about things that can't get recycled for example food every week the ship loads up 600 000 pounds of Provisions but for the food that's not eaten well the company had to figure out how to get rid of all of that too each one of the ship's restaurants and 36 kitchens has its own suction drain shafts and waders keep food scraps in separate buckets then once they've gotten enough they place it all in this special drain all the food waste ends up in one big pipe that runs through the entire ship and that pipe leads to what's known as the hydroprocessor those pipes over there so these were the food waste is passing through this is being a processed through here this machine has a bunch of tiny layers of mesh to break down the food it's being stored in our tank we have two tanks of Community Food waste and the final step incineration now let's talk about your toilet waste yep we're gonna go there it's all part of the water treatment system on board controlled from the engineering room all the Wastewater that we are generating on board the ship is being collected nothing goes overboard unless we have run into the right segment plan water is divided into two categories gray water from sinks laundries and drains and black water that includes everything from the galleys and your toilets including your urine this is then being mixed together and run through the advanced Wastewater purification plan the purification system purifies the water to a point above the U.S federal standard which is almost safe to drink and then it runs several filtration processes before it's been kept on board all is being discharged overboard when we are at Sea with a certain distance of land in order to meet a different local and international regulations an onboard filtration systems produce about a hundred and fifty thousand liters of drinkable water every hour pulled right from the sea so we are basically self-supplied with fresh water that's definitely within their best interests to be the most environmentally friendly because of significantly can reduce the waste on board the weight that they have to carry the fuel usage and it reduces our operational expenses as well while we don't know exactly how much fuel Symphony uses it's been reported in earlier Oasis class ship Harmony of the Seas could burn up to 66 000 gallons of diesel a day that's the equivalent of 600 cars driving from New York City to Los Angeles symphony is more efficient than older ships because of its Advanced bubble technology it releases air bubbles under the hull to help the ship Glide more easily across the water reducing drag and fuel consumption and Engineers like Stig can also capture excess heat coming off six engines too heat up portable water we're heating up the pools we are heating up the fuel tanks on board those diesel engines also generate all the ship's power this is about the same size has producing power for a little city of about 80 000 people all the lumps you see throughout the entire ship all the power supplies on every single stage room and venues then we have all the air conditioning including all the positioning plant where we store all the food and if any part breaks workshops hidden next to the engineering room handle it we have mechanical Workshop we have electrical workshops we have workshop for the hotel maintenance team and parts that we cannot easily get hold of or we need a we fabricate the possible but cruise on board Don't just run the ship's grid and engines there are hundreds of other jobs for Manning the surfer machine and zip lines to entertaining guests there are Ice shows Broadway style plays and an aqua performance we followed one performer for a day to see how she dazzles Cruise goers every single night hi I'm Ariana mazzagati I go by Moz here in the Royal Caribbean world I am the aerialist for the show hero on the Symphony of the Seas and I am also the aqua captain Royal Caribbean hires serious athletes they get paid to perform in Productions around the world in front of millions of cruise goers but the job isn't always easy performers work 11 months straight without a single vacation day and they do it all on a moving stage in the middle of the ocean that is the biggest thing to get used to is the rock of the ship when you're going to do a jump and you expect the floor to be here but the floor is here or the floor is here to bring your powerful character to Life mods is strapped into a 3D flying apparatus that allows her to flip and run above the crowd with only wires holding her up Mars is American and a cast of performers from all over the world and they're all accomplished athletes professional slackliners Olympic level divers and world-renowned martial artists like many of her fellow castmates mods never planned on being a crucial performer on a whim she tried out for Royal Caribbean her junior year of college and beat out thousands of others for a spot it's as difficult to get into a ship show as it is to get into a Broadway or a West End or a Cirque du Soleil show and in 2015 Maz got the call from Royal Caribbean she dropped out of college and has been performing on cruise ships ever since foreign hero the show's performers head to Royal Caribbean's training facility in Florida this is where they spend two months learning and perfecting the routine then they're off to see their stage the tricked out Aqua theater it's made up of the deepest pool at Sea with a transforming bottom 30-foot diving Towers a trampoline and tightropes suspended above the crowd the new digs take some getting used to you're brought from those plain gray Studios with mirrors into this and you're relearning everything because it all changes the water the weight of the costumes the quick changes backstage the makeup changes the hair changes it adds so many new elements that you could not even dream of during rehearsals finally they're performing live at the 600 person theater it takes about maybe two or three weeks to get into the zoning to feel one thousand percent you're not so stressed anymore throughout her contract Moz and her castmates will do this routine hundreds of times the performers don't get a single vacation day during their run trips home are only allowed in the case of an emergency they typically perform eight shows a week before any performance miles usually hits the gym for about an hour then she comes to the theater to rent a safety test on the 3D flyer the flyer is made up of a harness and four sets of wires connected to the ship the technology is pretty complex and can move her on four axes but the tech is proprietary to Royal Caribbean so we couldn't get too close after Moz is all set on the wires she stretches then heads downstairs to the secret four and a half deck of the ship to put on her makeup and get into costume Maus and her castmates do all their own makeup once the show starts ma stays hidden through the opening then she quietly climbs on a platform at the back of the audience while a crew member straps her into the harness the harness is very tight so that I do not fall out so the pain is necessary I can't necessarily say you get used to it because every day it might be in a different spot so you're just bruising a new spot the flying mechanism already has a routine programmed into it so once a crew member hits a button in the production box she soars above the crowd while suspended Moz uses her body to control her flips and Spins if I get to turn to the front or if my arm is out of place or if my chin is forward it'll send me rocking back and forth like this and I'll never be able to control it back because it just sends you and once you get a hole in the wire it'll just keep going but that's not the only challenge remember they're performing at Sea if it's windy she's blown around if it's rocking sometimes the wires will pull harder on one side so I have to work around and be able to preemptively move my body in a way that if I know a rock is coming I have to put more on one side than the other so that I can even out myself with the rock all these things affect other Aqua performers too a bob and the ship could affect the balance of a tightrope Walker if it's Rocky where a diver hits the water could be totally different from where they intended to when they left the platform if the ship's moving a little bit rocking a little bit and the water is going from one side to the other we call the bridge and at times to make sure that the shore the show happens the captain moves the ship a little bit if conditions are too bad say high winds or a rainstorm with lightning they'll postpone the performance every day is an absolute Adventure whether that be a difficult Adventure you're tired we work a lot we have safety duties that I don't think a lot of people necessarily even realize we have so many more duties than just coming out and performing now Royal Caribbean wouldn't share how much performers are paid in 2019 it was reported that some lower paid crew members could make around twenty thousand dollars annually performers get health insurance while they're employed on the ship and Free Housing on board they live in the crew quarters on the lower decks we have roommates so two lives to a cabin there are a few who have their own cabin and then as Aqua Captain I get my own cabin Royal Caribbean wouldn't show us the crew quarters but life below deck is well documented on social media Crews have their own mess hall grocery store and even their own dance club performers can use the passenger gym eat at the reservation only restaurant and swim in the pools all things no other crew members are allowed to do I will do this until my body physically cannot move in 2022 cruise lines were hit with staff shortages Norwegian and conard even had to cancel sailings shortages are not this staff from the bridge to the kitchen to the waste room have to move efficiently if the cruise line is going to keep a ship this size sailing smoothly by the following Saturday at 6 a.m the captain expertly guides the ship back into the Port of Miami they'll unload everything and everyone and prepare to do it all over again [Music] thank you

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 5,464,412

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, cruise, royal carribbean, expensive, luxury, sea, cruise ship, food, dining

Id: VYN7LR2gwso

Length: 27min 57sec (1677 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 22 2022