September 03, 2019
Accenture Named Premier Innovation Partner for Carnival Corporation’s Global Experience and Innovation Team
Accenture plays key role in delivering the OceanMedallionTM wearable device that provides enhanced passenger experiences and crew interactions
NEW YORK; Sept. 3, 2019 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has been named Premier Innovation Partner for Carnival Corporation’s Global Experience and Innovation Team to roll out the MedallionClassTM Experience currently available exclusively onboard Princess Cruises, delivering personalized service at scale.
The Princess MedallionClass Experience revolves around the OceanMedallion™ wearable device and a secure Experience Internet of Things™ (xIoT™) network. The OceanMedallion communicates with the xIoT network, offering guests a seamless experience when accessing areas and services, ordering food and drink, and finding friends and family anywhere on the ship.
One of the key benefits for guests starts before they even board the ship. Using the OceanReady® digital experience, MedallionClass guests can complete 95% of boarding steps on mobile devices before arrival. This reduces wait time by more than 90%, shortening to about 30-60 seconds a process that used to take 15-20 minutes.
Once guests are onboard, the xIoT network provides real-time data about guests that enables the crew to serve guests with higher levels of personalization as they move around the ship. Enabling frictionless payment, keyless stateroom access, cashless casino and streamlined embarkation, the OceanMedallion creates hassle-free cruising so guests can maximize every moment of their precious vacation time.
To date, more than 99% of guests are opting to use the OceanMedallion for a fully connected experience.
A redefined cruise experience with MedallionClass from Princess Cruises
“Accenture helped us bring our original xIoT idea to life, participating from ideation through the design, development and implementation phases,” said John Padgett, Carnival Corporation’s chief experience and innovation officer. “We value Accenture as a Premier Innovation Partner and look forward to continued collaboration to continuously enhance the platform based on both guest feedback and the tremendous amount of intelligence being generated.”
The xIoT solution generates millions of data points during a typical cruise, which will ultimately assist in the design of future ships as well energy efficiency solutions. Transforming each Princess ship into a MedallionClass™ vessel takes place during a 12-day drydock in which the ship is outfitted with the infrastructure — which includes 72 miles of cable, 7,000 sensors, 650 readers and more than 4,000 interactive portals. Apart from the interactive portals, all the technology is seamless and virtually invisible.
Accenture leveraged expertise and capabilities from across its entire business to help build the future-ready system for Carnival:
- Professionals from Accenture Interactive and Fjord (its design and innovation unit) helped in the wearable Medallion industrial design that communicates between the guests and the ship’s technologies, creating the seamless customer experience.
- Accenture Applied Intelligence helped develop an AI-powered “experience intelligence” engine to provide a personalized and unique experience for every guest based on specific choices, behaviors and preferences — integrating streaming analytics and machine learning to power experience intelligence and orchestrate a variety of guest data sources.
- Accenture Technology also provided technical architecture, software development and delivery capabilities, as well as testing and validation.
“By putting guests at the center, Carnival is positioning itself as what we call a ‘living business’ — a company that unlocks sustained growth by continuously adapting to customer needs to achieve hyper-relevance,” said John Spencer, a managing director in Accenture’s Travel practice and the company’s client lead for Carnival. “They achieve this by constantly learning, adapting and evolving with business strategies that champion customer needs, wants and desires. We’re excited to be a premier innovation partner for Carnival Corporation’s Global Experience Innovation team, working together not only to help implement and maintain the guest experience platform, but to continuously take the a best-in-class platform to new levels.”
The OceanMedallion recently received the 2019 IoT Wearables Innovation of the Year award by IoT Breakthrough and the Ocean Guest Experience Platform received a Gold New York Design Award for Digital IoT. In addition, Carnival received three U.S. patents protecting 46 intellectual property innovations of OceanMedallion.
Accenture is bringing some of the intellectual property from the program, which Carnival owns, into Accenture Labs and its broader Innovation Architecture to drive further innovation for Carnival as well as other clients in the oil and gas, restaurant and hotel industries.
Click here to learn more.
About Accenture
Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions — underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network — Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With 482,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com.
About Carnival Corporation & plc
Carnival Corporation & plc is the world’s largest leisure travel company and among the most profitable and financially strong in the cruise and vacation industries, with a portfolio of nine of the world’s leading cruise lines. With operations in North America, Australia, Europe and Asia, its portfolio features Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Seabourn, P&O Cruises (Australia), Costa Cruises, AIDA Cruises, P&O Cruises (UK) and Cunard.
Together, the corporation’s cruise lines operate 104 ships with 243,000 lower berths visiting over 700 ports around the world, with 19 new ships scheduled to be delivered through 2025. Carnival Corporation & plc also operates Holland America Princess Alaska Tours, the leading tour company in Alaska and the Canadian Yukon. Traded on both the New York and London Stock Exchanges, Carnival Corporation & plc is the only group in the world to be included in both the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100 indices.
With a long history of innovation and providing guests with extraordinary vacation experiences, Carnival Corporation has received thousands of industry awards – including recognition by the Consumer Technology Association™ as a CES® 2019 Innovation Awards Honoree for the OceanMedallion™. A revolutionary wearable device that contains a proprietary blend of communication technologies, the OceanMedallion enables the world’s first interactive guest experience platform transforming vacation travel on a large scale into a highly personalized level of customized service. The prestigious CES Innovation Awards honor outstanding design and engineering in consumer technology products.
Additional information can be found on www.carnival.com, www.princess.com, www.hollandamerica.com, www.seabourn.com, www.pocruises.com.au, www.costacruise.com, www.aida.de, www.pocruises.com and www.cunard.com.
About Princess Cruises
One of the best-known names in cruising, Princess Cruises is the fastest growing international premium cruise line and tour company operating a fleet of 17 modern cruise ships, carrying two million guests each year to 380 destinations around the globe, including the Caribbean, Alaska, Panama Canal, Mexican Riviera, Europe, South America, Australia/New Zealand, the South Pacific, Hawaii, Asia, Canada/New England, Antarctica and World Cruises. A team of professional destination experts have curated 170 itineraries, ranging in length from three to 111 days and Princess Cruises is continuously recognized as “Best Cruise Line for Itineraries.”
In 2017 Princess Cruises, with parent company Carnival Corporation, introduced MedallionClass Vacations enabled by the OceanMedallion, the vacation industry’s most advanced wearable device, provided free to each guest sailing on a MedallionClass ship. The award-winning innovation offers the fastest way to a hassle-free, personalized vacation giving guests more time to do the things they love most. MedallionClass Vacations will be activated on five ships by the end of 2019. An activation plan will continue across the global fleet in 2020 and beyond.
Princess Cruises continues its multi-year, “Come Back New Promise” – a $450 million-dollar product innovation and cruise ship renovation campaign that will continue to enhance the line’s onboard guest experience. These enhancements result in more moments of awe, lifetime memories and meaningful stories for guests to share from their cruise vacation. The product innovations include partnerships with award-winning Chef Curtis Stone; engaging entertainment inspired shows with Broadway-legend Stephen Schwartz; immersive activities for the whole family from Discovery and Animal Planet that include exclusive shore excursions to onboard activities; the ultimate sleep at sea with the award-winning Princess Luxury Bed and more.
Three new Royal-class ships are currently on order with the next new ship under construction, Sky Princess, scheduled for delivery in October 2019, followed by Enchanted Princess in June 2020. Princess previously announced that two new (LNG) ships which will be the largest ships in the Princess fleet, accommodating approximately 4,300 guests are planned for delivery in 2023 and 2025. Princess now has five ships arriving over the next six years between 2019 and 2025. The company is part of Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE:CUK).
# # #
Contacts:
Lara Wozniak
Accenture
+1 858 252 8208
lara.wozniak@accenture.com
Vicki Johnson
Carnival
+1 407 340 9658
vickijcomm@gmail.com