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At 228,081 tons, Royal Caribbean's Symphony of the Seas is the world's largest cruise ship (Photo: Royal Caribbean International)

It'll be a big day for the cruise world as Royal Caribbean's record-breaking Symphony of the Seas sails with paying passengers for the first time.

The 228,081-ton vessel — the largest cruise ship ever — is departing Barcelona Saturday evening on a five-night voyage to Italy that features stops in Naples and Civitavecchia, the port for Rome.

Designed for vacationers who love big, bustling mega-resorts, Symphony is built on the same platform as Royal Caribbean's 22-month-old Harmony of the Seas, the previous size leader in cruising. But it eclipses its sibling by more than 1,000 tons and offers several new features.

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Among the additions are a first-of-its-kind, two-deck-high family suite with a slide between floors, a revamped Boardwalk amusement area, a new laser tag attraction and a new-for-Royal Caribbean seafood restaurant. Symphony also has more cabins than Harmony.

Symphony can hold up to 6,680 passengers and sails with a crew of 2,200, meaning that on busy weeks it could be home to nearly 9,000 people.

Symphony has been under construction since early 2015 at the giant STX France shipyard in St. Nazaire, France — the same shipyard that built Harmony. Built at a cost of more than $1 billion, it was delivered to Royal Caribbean in St. Nazaire on March 23 and has spent the past week re-positioning to Barcelona.

Symphony will spend its first few months sailing in the Mediterranean out of Barcelona before moving to Miami to operate cruises to the Caribbean.

Symphony and Harmony are the latest, biggest vessels in Royal Caribbean's Oasis Class series. Two other Oasis Class ships, Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas, debuted in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

Royal Caribbean's Oasis Class vessels have made waves in the cruise industry since they began debuting in 2009. All of the Oasis Class ships are in excess of 225,000 tons — more than 30% larger than the next largest cruise vessels.

With the addition of Symphony of the Seas, Royal Caribbean has 25 ships.

MORE: First look at Symphony's swankiest suites

USA TODAY Cruises: The crazy things cruise lines are painting on their ships

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2GlTotK</s>Symphony of the Seas – which, on its maiden voyage from Barcelona in March 2018 became the largest passenger ship ever built – is about five times the size of the Titanic. At 362 metres long, you could balance it on its stern and its bow would tower over all but two of Europe’s tallest skyscrapers. Owned and operated by Miami-based cruise line Royal Caribbean, it can carry nearly 9,000 people and contains more than 40 restaurants and bars; 23 pools, jacuzzis and water slides; two West End-sized theatres; an ice rink; a surf simulator; two climbing walls; a zip line; a fairground carousel; a mini-golf course; a ten-storey fun slide; laser tag; a spa; a gym; a casino; plus dozens more shopping and entertainment opportunities. To put it another way, Symphony of the Seas might be the most ludicrously entertaining luxury hotel in history. It just also happens to float.

Picture a cruise ship. You’re likely imagining crisped-pink pensioners bent double over shuffleboard, cramped cabins, bad food and norovirus. And, once upon a time, you’d have been right. But in the last decade or so, cruise ships have gone from a means of transport to vast floating cities with skydiving simulators (Quantum of the Seas), go-karting (Norwegian Joy), bumper cars (Quantum again) and ice bars (Norwegian Breakaway). Restaurants offer menus designed by Michelin-starred chefs. As a result, the cruise industry is experiencing a golden age, boosted by millennials and explosive growth in tourists from China. More than twenty-five million people set sail on a cruise liner in 2017.

“Most people’s idea of a cruise is ‘Oh God, I’m going to be packed in with five thousand people I don’t want to talk to and getting bored out of my tree,” says Tom Wright, founder of WKK Architects, who has worked on cruise ships and land hotels. “In fact, it’s like going to a hotel that just moves magically over night.” (As one cruiser I met on Symphony’s fan page put it, “We get to see five destinations, and I only have to unpack once.”)

For many, a maiden cruise is rarely the last. From Southampton to Venice to Barbados, ports are full of white-hulled ships packed with repeat customers. Industry satisfaction ratings regularly exceed 94 per cent. And, as Richard Fain is fond of saying: nobody gets those kinds of numbers. Not even chocolate companies.

Fain is chairman of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd, a position he has held since 1988. (RCL comprises three lines: Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, and Azamara Club Cruises.) Now 69, Fain is square-jawed, broad and handsome. More than anyone, he is responsible for the transformation of cruise ships from modes of transport to mega-attractions. (Symphony is one of his. So are the world’s second-, third- and fourth-largest cruise ships.) A gifted salesman, the first time you meet he’ll lean in, tilt his head just so, and ask you straight: “Have you cruised?”

It was Fain who realised that the cruise industry’s image problem was in fact an opportunity. Convince sceptical land-lovers that cruise ships aren’t outdated, boring and, as an industry joke put it, full of “the newlywed and the nearly dead”, and Royal Caribbean could lock up customers for life. The problem was just one of perception.

To attract a new kind of customer, Fain needed a new kind of ship. To build it, he hired Harri Kulovaara, a Finnish naval architect who made a name for himself designing passenger ferries. Kulovaara has a round, boyish face and glasses with such thick upper frames it has the effect of a monobrow. Growing up in the coastal city of Turku, he would watch the ferries sail out of the harbour for Sweden each morning, and spend every moment he could on the water. After graduating in the late 80s, he designed two groundbreaking ferries for Finnish company Silja Line. They included a 150-metre, two-deck-high promenade down the centre, culminating in a huge window at the aft. The window brought natural light into the centre of the ship – before that, dark, depressing places – and created a natural, street-like hub for passengers.

Fain, who has a keen eye for design himself – his mentors included Jay Pritzker, the Hyatt Hotels co-founder and creator of the Pritzker Architecture Prize – took notice. “When Richard saw [the Kulovaara-designed] Silja Serenade, he said, ‘I’d like to have this kind of ship.’ The [Royal Caribbean] technical department told him it couldn’t be built,” explains Kulovaara. So, in 1995, Fain hired him to help run the company’s shipbuilding department alongside Njål Eide, a Norwegian architect who had become a legend in shipbuilding. (Eide had designed the first hotel-like atrium at sea, now a commonplace feature.) The company was planning to commission a carbon copy of its existing flagship, Sovereign of the Seas. “We’re not going to build that, Harri,” Fain told him. “We need something better.”

That “better” was 1999’s Voyager of the Seas. Costing upwards of $650 million (£469m), it was 75 per cent bigger than the previous-largest cruise ship, exceeding Panamax – the width of the Panama Canal, an industry-standard measurement. They introduced a central promenade, similar to that which Kulovaara had designed for Silja Line, ending in two banks of panoramic lifts. It was on Voyager that Royal Caribbean introduced the first ice rink at sea, and climbing walls on the rear funnel. (Fain initially thought climbing walls were a bad idea. Now they’re an industry standard.)

If you want to pinpoint the moment ship design went crazy, it’s with the launch of Voyager. Suddenly, cruising was in an amenities arms race. “There was a big shakeup,” says Trevor Young, vice president of new building at Royal rival MSC Cruises. “Companies started to treat the cruise liner as a floating resort, rather than as a ship.” Consider: since the launch of the RMS Queen Elizabeth in 1940, the record for largest passenger ship had changed hands twice. Since Kulovaara joined Royal Caribbean, the record has been broken 11 times. Kulovaara has designed ten of them.

“We don’t set out to build the largest ships,” Kulovaara told me, somewhat sheepishly. “The goal is to build the best ship. But we have so many ideas that we need a little bit more space.”

Cruise-ship architects face constraints that would confound their land-based counterparts. Ships need to be able to face North Atlantic storms, Baltic snow and blistering Caribbean heat in equal measure. The hull is beset on all sides by waves, which cause not only perpetual motion, but vibrations through the steel structure – as do the engines and propellers. A ship at sea is its own island: it must generate its own energy and water, and treat its own waste. There is no fire service nor ambulance, so every crew member is fire trained and the on-board medical centre must be able to handle almost any kind of emergency (including death: all ships have a small morgue, a necessity for a pastime so beloved by the elderly). Some maintain a brig, in case of onboard miscreants – though I’m told their use is rare.

Kulovaara’s New Build department is located in Royal Caribbean’s Innovation Lab, which is based in PortMiami – the largest passenger port – in Biscayne Bay, Florida. The team has around 200 people, including naval architects, interior designers, engineers and project managers. “When I started to get involved we didn’t use CAD,” says Fain. “We used SAD, or ‘scissors-aided design’, because what you did was spread out your drawing on the dining room table and then cut and paste it.” Today, the Innovation Lab includes extensive prototyping and testing facilities, and a large virtual-reality “cave” simulator to allow Kulovaara’s designers and architects to walk around interior spaces throughout the design process.

The essential consideration when designing a cruise ship is flow of human traffic. “They have a relatively high density of population. How can you spread the people and make sure they find their way?” asks Kulovaara. “Understanding how people behave, anticipating how they behave, is key.” With nearly 9,000 people on board including crew, distributing attractions evenly across the ship is crucial. Hence, Symphony’s two main theatres are at opposite ends. The casino is central, but below the Royal Promenade. (A rule of thumb is that it takes the first two days of a cruise just to get your bearings.)

Perhaps even more important is the movement of the ship’s 2,200 crew, who must be able to access galleys and stores in the bowels of the ship easily. There are safety considerations, too: today’s megaships are split vertically into six or more fire zones, which can be isolated in case of an emergency. Muster stations (usually large public areas) must be evenly spread. Even corridor width is calculated for the necessary flow of passengers in the event of an emergency.

Once the major spaces are sketched out, there’s the onerous task of plumbing. “The big part of building a ship, 85 per cent, is what you don’t see. It’s the air conditioning, the electric systems, the water systems, power generation,” says Kulovaara. Cruise ships are built using concurrent design: while the keel and lower hull are being cut, the top of the ship is still being laid out. “We do the conceptual design and the architectural design,” says Kulovaara. “The naval architects think about hydrodynamics, hydrostatics, hull forms. Then we transfer that to the shipyard and they do the final engineering.”

As the ship is so vast, the detailed design work is commissioned out to multiple architectural firms. Restaurant architects design restaurants; caravan designers tend to be good at state rooms (the industry term for cabins). “We have probably 100 architects who have worked closely with us for a long time,” says Kulovaara. Early in the design process, Royal holds open competitions to design new spaces. “The reason is if you do it in-house, you become blind to change.”

When trying to introduce “anything extraordinary”, Kulovaara assigns a special projects team. With Voyager, New Build had sketched a blank space in midship for a new entertainment venue. The team proposed an indoor arena including a synthetic ice surface, “glice”. Kulovaara assigned the project to Boston-based Wilson Butler Architects. The firm has since worked on several of Royal Caribbean’s wildest schemes, including a viewing platform that extends high above Quantum of the Seas. “We’ve become pretty good at problem solving,” says Butler.

In January 2018, I went to visit Symphony under construction in Saint-Nazaire, France. It was a miserable day: grey mist hung in the air like gauze, but the ship was still visible several kilometres away. The shipyard, STX France, is one of the few equipped to build liners of Symphony’s scale. The decks are built upside down, in around 80 huge sections – each can weigh upwards of 800 tonnes – and are then robotically welded together like vast LEGO blocks. On the dockside, deck sections of a new MSC Cruises ship lay idle. The legs of an offshore rig stood monolithic, the platform unattached. Symphony was running ahead of schedule.

Kulovaara, Fain and the Royal Caribbean management team were visiting another of their ships, Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Edge, due to sail in November 2018. While they attended meetings, Timo Yrjovuori, the project manager for Symphony’s build, gave me a tour of the ship. Another Finn, Yrjovuori has light stubble and blond hair hidden under his yellow hard hat. As we boarded Symphony’s lower decks, the ship was teeming with activity. More than 1,000 workers were undertaking the final outfitting, and the sounds of sawing, welding and industrial vehicles cut through a riot of languages and radio stations.

Symphony is the fourth ship in Royal Caribbean’s Oasis class, which launched in 2009. Oasis of the Seas was another paradigm shift in ship design: 50 per cent larger again, at 225,000 gross tonnes, it was almost double the industry average. Each Oasis-class ship costs more than $1 billion, not including the vast new cruise terminals Royal Caribbean built in Miami to hold them. “The complexity of building ships goes up exponentially” with size, Kulovaara says. (Previously, the largest lifeboats on the market carried 150 people. In designing Oasis, Royal Caribbean also had to develop a new class of 370-person lifeboats. Symphony has 18 of them.)

The Oasis class’s crowning glory is its split superstructure: 18 decks tall, its central section is a progression of Voyager’s promenade design. The aft is divided up the middle by an 11-deck valley, giving it a horseshoe shape. Standing in the centre of the Boardwalk (Oasis ships are split into seven “neighbourhoods”) feels like standing in Manhattan, with mini-skyscrapers on each side. The chasm is bridged by a Sun deck at the top; from there the 11-storey Ultimate Abyss slides curl down to the Boardwalk.

“To split a cruise liner down the middle in this way was a really big departure,” says Tom Wright, who helped in the development of the exterior spaces for the Oasis class ships. “It’s probably the biggest departure ever by the cruise industry.”

Yrjovuori and I toured the ship. Below decks, Symphony of the Seas is like an Amazon warehouse, a cathedral to logistics. The ship’s bowels are split by a two-lane corridor, nicknamed I-95 after the US highway. In the main galleys are bathtub-sized food processors and dishwashers closer in appearance and size to car washes.

Food is stored in bungalow-sized cold rooms. Even here, flow is king: the layout of the room has been meticulously optimised by observing chefs and service staff to maximise output at peak time; because cold food guarantees unhappy passengers, all of Symphony’s restaurants are designed with a set maximum distance from galley to table.

“The level of hygiene is extreme,” Yrjovuori announced, as we passed a hand-washing station. Though ship-wide outbreaks of sickness make the news at least once a year, the total number of passengers who fall ill is a fraction of one per cent. But close quarters enable outbreaks, so sanitation regulations at sea are stringent. Every part of the ship, from lift buttons to the casino’s chips, are sanitised daily; interior materials have to stand up to the high level of chlorination from the constant cleaning. Rubbish is frozen in vast storage containers to slow bacteria growth and is only removed in port.

In midships above the Royal Promenade lies perhaps Symphony’s most remarkable feature: Central Park, an open-air garden enclosed by the upper cabins. Its development was another first, and was fraught with challenges. “I suggested it was going to be a grassy field,” says Wright. Fain loved the idea, but a grass park at sea seemed insane: the deck faces salt air, scorching Sun and foot traffic from thousands of passengers almost every day of the year.

“We do a lot of research,” explains Kelly Gonzalez, Royal’s vice president of newbuilding architectural design. Gonzalez, who leads the design of the ships’ public spaces, is Kulovaara’s closest collaborator; the two have worked together for 20 years. “We hired a grass and lawn expert from the University of Florida. We did a machine test, which was a rolling wheel with sneakers on it that would simulate footsteps.”

The results were not encouraging. “The immediate response is always ‘We’ll tweak it,’” says Fain. “We said no, this is not a tweak. This is a design flaw.”

Kulovaara called a charrette – a closed-doors design retreat that Royal has used for problem-solving since Voyager. “We went back to redesign it,” he says. Their solution was a landscaped garden with 12,000 plants and trees. It required extensive engineering, right down to the soil. “It’s a kind of volcanic exploded clay, so it’s not as dense as it would be on a land-based arboretum,” explains Butler, whose firm worked on the engineering. “On land you put in a sprinkler system and the soil gets saturated. We can’t afford that wet weight, so we do underground watering.” Botanists were consulted, as were ports’ various customs agencies for rules on foreign plant species.

Even unfinished, it’s remarkable: an airy urban park, floating on a skyscraper with an open-air café and performance space thrown in, all in the middle of the ocean.

After the park, we toured Symphony’s accommodation. Its state rooms are pre-fabricated en masse and inserted into the ship like huge Jenga blocks. Yrjovuori’s army of outfitters were busy adding mattresses and other finishing touches.

More than half of Symphony is taken up by state rooms. “We always say the millimetres matter,” says Harold Law, a senior architectural associate who oversees their development. A centimetre saved by using a thinner veneer might, along the length of the ship, mean an extra cabin per deck. Storage is honed with IKEA-like precision (the secret is calculating average luggage size plus a little extra, for souvenirs).

State rooms must be acoustically insulated – to shield occupants from their neighbours, but also vibrations from the engines, nightclubs or an overhead skydiving machine. The bathroom units are subjected to an incline test: a blocked toilet must still drain at 10° of ship tilt without spilling into the room.

The biggest challenge comes when designing the interior rooms. “Traditionally on inside rooms there’s no natural light, so you can lose track of time very quickly,” says Law. (Days at sea distort time – Symphony’s lifts contain screens reminding passengers what day of the week it is.) On 2014’s Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean introduced Virtual Balconies, floor-to-ceiling screens which show a live camera feed of the outside view. There are four cameras, because during testing, they discovered that a feed facing the wrong direction causes seasickness. “You have the sensation of the motion of the ship; the visual has to match,” Law says.

“We’re constantly using design to alter the perspective of the room environment,” says Gonzalez. Uplighting and mirrors can help ceilings feel taller. The right pattern on a carpet can lengthen or shorten a space, or provide a subliminal help with wayfinding. One problem with such huge ships is the absurdly long corridors, so the architects insert fake arches or obstacles to make them appear shorter. On Quantum, Royal introduced lenticular wall art, which changes whether you’re walking fore or aft.

Celebrity Edge will introduce perhaps the biggest change in state-room design since balconies were introduced in the 80s. “I was watching the cruise ships going out from Miami one day,” explains Xavier Leclercq, Royal’s senior vice president of New Build and innovation. “I counted the passengers on their balconies – only two per cent of people [were] using them.”

Kulovaara’s team commissioned some research and came to a counterintuitive conclusion: offer passengers balconies and they say they want them, but few actually use them. So, on Celebrity Edge, Wright – the ship’s lead architect – and Royal’s New Build team eliminated balconies entirely. Instead they designed what they call the Infinite Veranda: floor-to-ceiling windows, the upper half of which lowers entirely to create an indoor balcony. As a result, Edge’s entry-level state rooms are 23 per cent larger and bathrooms 20 per cent bigger than the previous standard. “The cruise industry is incredibly conservative,” says Wright. “To change the structure of how it’s always been done – it’s really quite a big deal.”

In November 2017, before my visit to France, I flew to New York to see the future of cruise ship design. Royal Caribbean had rented a space in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard to demonstrate what it calls Project Excalibur. Guests from the travel industry lounged on white leather sofas, ordering drinks via an app. Wi-Fi beacons tracked our locations, and the waiters’ custom-designed trays included a smartphone displaying our picture, so we never had to go to the bar.

The feature will debut on Symphony of the Seas and be rolled out across the entire Royal fleet. On the main stage, huge 4K screens on robotic arms delivered a dance performance (the show, something of a novelty gimmick, is featured on Quantum-class ships), before Fain made his presentation.

Kulovaara watched from the side of the room. New Build were early in the masterplanning phase for Royal’s next class of ship, codenamed Icon, which is planned to debut in 2022. Notably, Icon class, at 200,000 gross tonnes, will be smaller than Oasis. Instead, the focus is on efficiency, an urgent trend in an industry long criticised for cruise ships’ environmental impact, which included burning huge quantities of fuel and, for several decades, dumping of waste water. (Today, black water – the ship’s sewage – is treated on board, and only dumped into the sea when it reaches near drinking-water purity.)

“Energy efficiency is something we have a lot of pride in,” says Kulovaara. They expect Symphony to be, by weight, the most energy-efficient ship at sea (a claim currently held by Harmony). “We were able to improve the ship’s energy efficiency by 20 per cent with about 100 different initiatives. The hull form was improved, the propellers were improved, the air conditioning controls were improved, the lighting system was improved.” New Royal ships feature hulls that emit tiny bubbles to reduce drag, meaning the ship in effect sails on air.

After Fain’s pitch for Excalibur, we were given a rundown of the attractions Icon might eventually bring. Some, like a shallow VR sushi-eating experience, felt more like gimmicks for the tech press in attendance. But other elements seemed inevitable: check in via facial-recognition, and a Star Trek-like bridge of the future which included augmented-reality displays showing live data streams. Perhaps the most significant demo was the least well attended: a hydrogen fuel cell, which will be used to generate electricity on Icon, supplementing existing diesel engines. Icon will also be the first of Royal’s fleet to run on liquefied natural gas; Carnival, AIDA and MSC also all have LNG ships under construction, as part of an industry-wide move to meet emissions targets.

Icon’s design is still a closely-held secret, and Kulovaara would only speak in veiled terms. “We’re looking at how the infrastructure has been done on a cruise ship for the last 40 years, and we believe that there is the potential of doing drastically different things,” he said. The last time we spoke, in January, the outline for Icon was coming together, but the design was still lacking… something, so they took a break to look for inspiration. “A ship’s lifespan is at least 25 years. So we have to plan that a ship is still relevant, purposeful and efficient, more than 20 years ahead.”

Right now, Kulovaara has 13 ships on order. In 2014, Royal Caribbean became the world’s largest cruise line by passenger capacity (Carnival is still larger by total passengers, primarily because it offers shorter cruises). Other cruise lines have followed Fain’s lead: in 2017, MSC Cruises announced plans to build four 200,000-tonne World class ships, with split hulls remarkably similar to Symphony. Arch-rival Carnival has ordered two 180,000-tonne ships, due in 2020.

Still, Symphony’s record as the largest ever looks like it won’t be broken for a while. “The ships are now large enough and give us a platform that we can really do some amazing things,” says Fain. “So a gut answer is: I don’t personally see a need to build larger. But never say never.”

Back on Symphony of the Seas, Yrjovuori momentarily lost his bearings. We stopped and, taking our cue from the stairway’s decor, set off downwards. The sky was getting darker and it had started to rain. Construction was winding down for the night, and for the first time the ship’s corridors were quiet. “It’s maybe romantic, but I think ships have a kind of soul,” he said. “It’s not like a building. They have a kind of personality. ”

It was a few weeks before Symphony would set out on final sea trials. “It’s such an interesting moment in the ship’s life, when she first meets the sea,” Leclercq told me, back on shore. “It’s like a baby being born. Thousands of people, thousands of skill sets… it’s a big human adventure.” When Harmony was floated, the locals in Saint-Nazaire took to the water to meet her. “Thousands of boats were in the water. It was a beautiful day.”

Symphony of the Seas already has bookings until the end of 2019. At the time of my visit, the ship’s Facebook page was filling with passengers excitingly monitoring its progress and discussing itineraries. Kelli Carlsen, an American teacher based in Oslo, told me she booked after her and her husband spent their honeymoon on Harmony of the Seas. “It was once in a lifetime,” she said – until it wasn’t. They’re booked for June 2018. The week after they disembark, she and a friend are cruising again, on Serenade of the Seas. They’re joining the ship late, in Rome, but Carlsen says she doesn’t mind. “There’s so many stops. We just go for the ships, really.”</s>The UK boss of Royal Caribbean International said the line needs to do more to attract the luxury travel market.

Ben Bouldin, Royal’s associate vice-president and managing director for UK and Ireland, said the line “worked with more agents than anyone else” but conceded there was more work to do.

Speaking onboard Symphony of the Seas on its pre-inaugural sailing this week, Bouldin said: “What we have not done a good job of yet is making sure that the luxury travel market really appreciates the opportunity that Royal Caribbean can provide for them.”

Royal Caribbean has more “bigger, better suites” across its fleet than “most five or six star cruise lines”, according to Bouldin.

He added that he and his sales team needed to identify the agents who have “a higher propensity to sell suites”, adding: “That is one of the things that we are aware of.”

Bouldin said the UK market had returned to where Royal Caribbean wanted it to be after the pound slumped following the Brexit referendum in 2016.

He said: “It is a combination of the rates we are achieving from our guests in the UK, coupled with a more positive exchange rate, so good news for the UK.”

With ship deployment discussions ongoing internally, Bouldin said the economic upturn would allow him to have “a more realistic chance of having an impact” at the negotiating table.</s>Flip through a cruise brochure and you'll find all sorts of trips that sail from cities like Miami, New Orleans, and Galveston. Someday soon, Lori Baer believes trips from Gulfport will also be on that list.

The consultant said the Port of Gulfport "is my favorite client. And I think this is a solid winner."

Baer's agency hosted this cruise ship workshop. The Florida based consulting company was hired by the Port of Gulfport to analyze whether South Mississippi can lure cruise ships to its docks. According to Baer, "It has all of the elements to be successful."

The optimism Baer expressed during her one hour presentation had coast leaders more committed than ever to the cruise ship concept. Joe Feil of the Gulf Coast Attractions Association said, "I'm 100 percent convinced. It's going to happen. It's definitely going to happen."

Prior to that, Cruise Ship Task Force member Al Hopkins stood in front of those gathered at the workshop and said, "This is an important day. It's an exciting day. And it's going to happen because of what's going on in this room."

The Port of Gulfport proved 13 months ago that it does have the facilities to handle a cruise ship for a one time only visit. Now, port commissioners are in the process of redesigning their piers, so cruise ships and cargo ships can sail in and out of here 365 days a year.

"A lot of things need to be done," port director Gary LaGrange said. "But nothing that is insurmountable, and nothing we can't do."

If a cruise line chooses to dock its ship in Gulfport, it would take about two years for that ship to arrive here. When a cruise company will add Gulfport to its itinerary is not known. The consultants believe it should be sooner than later.

A coast delegation will be in Florida next month to meet with representatives of the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association. That meeting is supposed to give the coast unprecedented access to cruise ship companies.

To help the Port of Gulfport handle cruise ships, cargo ships, and casinos, construction is about to begin on a 60-acre addition to the west pier. That'll be where the bulk of its cargo businesses move.

Port commissioners are also working with the Copa Casino to find a new place for it to operate. The consultants think the present Copa dock would make a great spot for a cruise ship terminal.</s>Royal Caribbean Cruises (NYSE: RCL) and Camping World (NYSE:CWH) are both consumer discretionary companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, valuation, profitability, earnings, dividends, analyst recommendations and institutional ownership.

74.4% of Royal Caribbean Cruises shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 42.8% of Camping World shares are held by institutional investors. 15.3% of Royal Caribbean Cruises shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 66.6% of Camping World shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

This table compares Royal Caribbean Cruises and Camping World’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for Royal Caribbean Cruises and Camping World, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

Royal Caribbean Cruises presently has a consensus target price of $137.85, indicating a potential upside of 17.08%. Camping World has a consensus target price of $49.25, indicating a potential upside of 52.71%. Given Camping World’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Camping World is more favorable than Royal Caribbean Cruises.

This table compares Royal Caribbean Cruises and Camping World’s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

Royal Caribbean Cruises has higher revenue and earnings than Camping World. Camping World is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Royal Caribbean Cruises, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Royal Caribbean Cruises pays an annual dividend of $2.40 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.0%. Camping World pays an annual dividend of $0.32 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.0%. Royal Caribbean Cruises pays out 31.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Camping World pays out 14.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years. Royal Caribbean Cruises has raised its dividend for 6 consecutive years. Royal Caribbean Cruises is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Royal Caribbean Cruises has a beta of 1.13, suggesting that its stock price is 13% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Camping World has a beta of 1.87, suggesting that its stock price is 87% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Royal Caribbean Cruises beats Camping World on 10 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. operates as a cruise company. The company operates cruises under the Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, and Azamara Club Cruises brands. The Royal Caribbean International brand provides itineraries to destinations worldwide, including Alaska, Asia, Australia, Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, the Panama Canal, and New Zealand with cruise lengths that range from 2 to 23 nights. The Celebrity Cruises brand offers itineraries to destinations, such as Alaska, Asia, Australia, Bermuda, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, the Galapagos Islands, Hawaii, India, New Zealand, the Panama Canal, and South America with cruise lengths ranging from 2 to 19 nights. The Azamara Club Cruises brand offers cruise itineraries ranging from 4 to 21 nights to destinations, including Asia, Australia/New Zealand, Northern and Western Europe, the Mediterranean, Central and North America, and the less-traveled islands of the Caribbean. As of December 31, 2017, the company operated 49 ships with itineraries ranging from 2 to 23 nights to approximately 540 destinations. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. was founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Miami, Florida.

Camping World Holdings, Inc. is a provider of a portfolio of services, protection plans, products and resources for recreational vehicle (RV) enthusiasts. The Company operates through two segments: Consumer Services and Plans, and Retail. Within the Consumer Services and Plans segment, the Company derives revenue from the sale of the offerings, including emergency roadside assistance; property and casualty insurance programs; travel assist programs; extended vehicle service contracts; co branded credit cards; vehicle financing and refinancing; club memberships, and publications and directories. Within the Retail segment, it derives revenue from the sale of the products, including new vehicles; used vehicles; parts and service, including RV accessories and supplies, and finance and insurance. The Company provides its offerings through its two brands: Good Sam and Camping World. Its Camping World brand operates a network of RV centric retail locations in the United States.

Receive News & Ratings for Royal Caribbean Cruises Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Royal Caribbean Cruises and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.</s>Want to travel the world without having to pay for housing or food? Of course you do! This is why the idea of being a cruise ship worker is so enticing, but there’s a side to cruise ships none of us see. While you’re relaxing by the pool or shoving your face full of all-you-can-eat pizza, there’s someone stuck catering to your every need. Those hand towel animals don’t just appear on your bed out of nowhere! The Things The…

Want to travel the world without having to pay for housing or food? Of course you do! This is why the idea of being a cruise ship worker is so enticing, but there’s a side to cruise ships none of us see. While you’re relaxing by the pool or shoving your face full of all-you-can-eat pizza, there’s someone stuck catering to your every need. Those hand towel animals don’t just appear on your bed out of nowhere!

The Things The Crew Don’t Want You To Know

A cruise ship is essentially a floating hotel, and working in the service and hospitality industry is never easy. Before you decide to fill out a job application and set sail, read on for some behind-the-scenes secrets coming from former cruise workers themselves!

Gavin, a waiter who worked for a major cruise line told Mental Floss that Big Brother is super real. In other words: there are cameras literally everywhere. This is mostly for safety as you’re literally on a giant boat in the middle of the ocean. Though the next Titanic is unlikely, crew members may have to review security footage in the event of an emergency.

When you’re away for most of the year and cut off from the rest of the world, it’s way easier to get away with hiding some major secrets. This is why so many cruise workers lead double lives when they’re on the ship. It’s not uncommon for certain couples to have wives at home and a whole different relationship as soon as they set sail. Apparently, marriage vows may not really hold up in international waters.

There have also been reports of gay men who are closeted on land but very open and out-of-the-closet on the ship. Being cut off from the world gives you a chance to be who you want to be, not who you feel you have to be on land.

Forget keeping up with Game of Thrones or your favorite TV programs. If you work on a cruise ship, you’re lucky to keep up with the news in general. As much as it may pain you to not see your favorite team smash next season out of the park, sometimes it’s impossible to tune in. Internet connections at sea are notoriously expensive and unreliable. Often times, you have to catch up when you dock, leaving days between when you get your news and not. For this reason, many cruise workers tend to stop following news, sports, and pop culture altogether.

Crew members don’t want to alarm passengers. Guests are on vacation and don’t need to know about every little emergency – especially if it doesn’t have to do with them. What sort of mass panic would it cause if every passenger suddenly knew there was a small fire on the ship? It’d be hectic! Because of this, crew workers use certain codes that they can announce on a loudspeaker without alarming passengers.

The Crew Parties Harder than the Guests

Work hard, party hard – this motto holds true for cruise ship workers. When workers aren’t working, they’re probably drinking and partying. In fact, the crew has a special “crew only” bar with insanely cheap liquor. For example, many cruises charge about $15 a drink for guests, but at the crew bar, you can get a cocktail for less than $1.50. The crew definitely party hard, but they’ve got to be careful. Ships sometimes subject employees to random breathalyzer and drug tests, though it’s not always enforced. A former cruise ship worker who spoke to Trend-Chaser let us know just how lax the rules often are.

“The crew isn’t supposed to get drunk pretty much ever,” he said. “Everyone is told they’re not allowed to actually get drunk, but then you go drinking with your HR person and she has four or five drinks.” Apparently, people drink on the job all the time and just fly under-the-radar. As long as you’re not making a spectacle of yourself, you’re probably good to go.

You Can’t Hook Up With The Guests

If you’re looking to find a fun fling while you’re on contract at sea, look away from anyone who may be on vacation. Cruise workers are strictly forbidden to hook up with guests, and it’s one of the easiest ways to get booted from your job. In fact, according to an anonymous cruise worker who spoke to Trend-Chaser, the crew is actually discouraged from interacting with guests one-on-one. This helps protect the cruise line from any sort of accusations that may hurt the ship’s reputation. If you’re caught breaking the rules, you’ll be kicked off at the next port.

It can get pretty boring at sea. To break the monotony, cruise members pull pranks on passengers. The pranks are pretty innocuous, as messing with passengers too hard is a great way to get fired.

According to one anonymous cruise worker who spoke to Mental Floss, “A favorite was while in a passenger area say to another crew member, loud enough to be heard by passengers, ‘Meet you in the bowling alley tonight!’” Of course, there wasn’t actually a bowling alley on board. “Then we’d wait for the comment cards to come in: ‘Why do crew get a bowling alley when we don’t?’” Hysterical!

Crew members are the lowest on the food chain, meaning they get the scraps. It’s like high school cafeteria food, but sometimes worse. The kitchen staff does get creative considering they don’t have a whole lot to work with, but it’s not necessarily something you’d want to eat all the time. Imagine having to eat weird offerings like goat foot stew on the regular!

Lucky cruise members get to eat passenger leftovers. At the end of a shift, they’re allowed to eat what’s left of a passenger buffet, though it’s so good, it doesn’t really last very long.

The service and hospitality industry is a goldmine for weird stories. You never really know what you’re going to get, so you have to be ready for anything. Cruise ship employees are pretty used to getting bizarre requests from guests when they’re at sea. According to USA Today, one cruise ship worker repeatedly gets strange requests from young couples on the ship. At this point, it’s more common than it is surprising.

You Don’t Get Days Off

If you’re the kind of person who savors your weekends, avoid working on a cruise ship at all costs. Most cruise ship workers don’t get a single day off. Typically, they’re contracted for nine months at a time and work straight through.

It’s not absolutely terrible, though. The crew works every day but on a rotational basis. Instead of having full days off, workers get hours of downtime every day that they can spend on themselves. When their contract is up, they get a nice two-month long vacation. Think of all the stuff you’d do if you had two months off.

Often, cruise lines are known for their delectable food offering a variety of fancy desserts, seafood, and other delicacies. However, for employees they get the short end of the stick so to speak. One cruise worker wrote on Reddit that it was akin to a school lunch saying, “Imagine eating at your high-school cafeteria three meals a day, seven days a week for a year.” Another employee said they were fed strange cuisine like “goat foot stew”. Yikes! Former cruise ship employee Kat told Mental Floss, that the food choices were a sure-fire way to lose weight. She said, “I would lose about 10 to 12 pounds per contract.”

While relationships between employees are definitely discouraged. They absolutely do happen. Although, the opposite is true for passenger and employee relationship. These relationships are strictly forbidden by cruise lines around the world. If they do occur and the cruise line finds out about it, the employee is almost immediately fired. Of course, this rule is in order to protect the company from facing any kind of lawsuits or general bad press. So, if you’re looking for love on a cruise, it’s best not to start with the crew! Or at least wait until everyone is land bound before you contact them!

Cruises are known for places to let loose, well for the passengers anyway, but did you know the same holds true for the employees? Cruise ship employees are notorious for heavy partying and heavy drinking. Typically, staff has their own designated drinking area, where they can partake out of sight from passengers. While cruise ship drinks are notoriously expensive, at the crew bar they are much cheaper where you can buy a mixed drink for as low as a $1.25. We can certainly see why partying with the crew might be more desirable than partying above deck! Plus, alcohol would certainly be a way to distract from the cramped living quarters.</s>Media coverage about Royal Caribbean Cruises (NYSE:RCL) has been trending somewhat positive on Saturday, according to Accern Sentiment Analysis. The research firm scores the sentiment of news coverage by reviewing more than twenty million news and blog sources in real time. Accern ranks coverage of companies on a scale of -1 to 1, with scores nearest to one being the most favorable. Royal Caribbean Cruises earned a media sentiment score of 0.11 on Accern’s scale. Accern also assigned media coverage about the company an impact score of 46.3991093714733 out of 100, meaning that recent news coverage is somewhat unlikely to have an impact on the company’s share price in the near term.

Here are some of the headlines that may have effected Accern’s rankings:
• Royal Caribbean updates new smartphone app and enables login & features for Allure and Symphony (royalcaribbeanblog.com)
• Royal Caribbean offering 50% off second guest and extra savings on 3rd and 4th guests (royalcaribbeanblog.com)
• Royal Caribbean Just Unveiled the World’s Biggest, Most Luxurious Cruise Ship (maxim.com)

Shares of NYSE RCL traded up $1.21 during mid-day trading on Friday, hitting $117.74. 1,071,881 shares of the company’s stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 1,462,985. The company has a current ratio of 0.18, a quick ratio of 0.15 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.59. Royal Caribbean Cruises has a 1 year low of $93.86 and a 1 year high of $135.65. The stock has a market capitalization of $25,166.81, a price-to-earnings ratio of 15.64, a P/E/G ratio of 0.64 and a beta of 1.13.

Royal Caribbean Cruises (NYSE:RCL) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, January 24th. The company reported $1.34 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the Zacks’ consensus estimate of $1.20 by $0.14. Royal Caribbean Cruises had a net margin of 18.51% and a return on equity of 16.22%. The company had revenue of $2 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.97 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $1.23 EPS. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 5.0% on a year-over-year basis. equities analysts predict that Royal Caribbean Cruises will post 8.7 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, April 5th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, March 7th will be given a dividend of $0.60 per share. This represents a $2.40 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.04%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, March 6th. Royal Caribbean Cruises’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 31.87%.

A number of brokerages have weighed in on RCL. Berenberg Bank upgraded shares of Royal Caribbean Cruises from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 11th. Bank of America boosted their price objective on shares of Royal Caribbean Cruises from $135.00 to $138.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 25th. JPMorgan Chase boosted their price objective on shares of Royal Caribbean Cruises from $139.00 to $150.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 25th. Wedbush reissued an “outperform” rating and set a $145.00 price objective (up previously from $139.00) on shares of Royal Caribbean Cruises in a research report on Thursday, January 25th. Finally, Zacks Investment Research downgraded shares of Royal Caribbean Cruises from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Thursday, January 18th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have issued a hold rating, twelve have assigned a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. The company has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $137.00.

In other news, CEO Bradley H. Stein sold 8,528 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, February 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $124.34, for a total transaction of $1,060,371.52. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 17,341 shares in the company, valued at $2,156,179.94. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CEO Richard D. Fain sold 20,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, March 13th. The shares were sold at an average price of $126.33, for a total transaction of $2,526,600.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 911,737 shares in the company, valued at $115,179,735.21. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders have sold 120,799 shares of company stock worth $15,556,896. Corporate insiders own 15.30% of the company’s stock.

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Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. operates as a cruise company. The company operates cruises under the Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, and Azamara Club Cruises brands. The Royal Caribbean International brand provides itineraries to destinations worldwide, including Alaska, Asia, Australia, Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, the Panama Canal, and New Zealand with cruise lengths that range from 2 to 23 nights.

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The current largest cruise ship in the world Royal Caribbean International's $1.35 billion MV Symphony of the Seas commences its maiden voyage.