Adam has been with the company since 1988 and has held a variety of positions in marketing, brand operations and market development.
He became president of Royal Caribbean International in February 2005 and in September 2007 expanded his role to include CEO. He oversees fleet operations, sales and marketing, brand development, supply chain management, government and community relations and Royal Celebrity Tours.
Adam graduated with honours from Princeton University, majoring in public policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He also has a law degree from Harvard and an MBA with distinction from INSEAD, the European business school in Fontainebleau, France.
After a brief stint as a lawyer, he ended up working for a shipping company, Gotaas-Larsen, which owned Royal Caribbean Cruises Lines, and thought the cruise business ‘was pretty cool’. His boss in London was Richard Fain – and still is today.
Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd is one of the world’s biggest cruise companies, operating the Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, CDF Croisieres de France, Azamara Cruises and Pullmantur brands, with 38 ships and a passenger capacity of approximately 81,000.
Adam is based in Miami but talked to working matters during a visit to the UK this week.

What do you do at RCI?
I have two responsibilities: firstly, for performance of the Royal Caribbean International brand, which is 65% of the corporate revenue base; and secondly, working with the chairman and chief executive [Fain] and two others on the executive committee to oversee the business of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. 

Who reports in to you?
I have nine direct reports, five are specific to RCI and four are multi-branded.

What is the best thing about your job?
It is endlessly interesting, no matter that I have been doing it for 21 years, because of the diversity of the business.
It is changing all the time and it’s a fun industry.
I have the ‘conference test’ – if I am in a hotel with lots of conferences going on, I look at the signs on the boards outside the meeting rooms. I have not yet seen another industry that I would like to be in.

And the worst?
It is frustrating that with all the effort and delivery of great products and services we are not able to generate the profitability that we mean to do. The level of experience is really state-of-the-art, nowhere can compare, but the economic performance does not line up.
We want to please our shareholders as much as our customers. There are economic cycles: this is a worse time, but there will be better.
The excitement around Oasis of the Seas is so great, it overshadows the rest.

What would help you to do your job better?
Customers paying higher prices for their cruises!
There are always opportunities to coordinate better with our offices around the globe. We always want to do things better and faster.
I enjoy working with my management team of dedicated people but there are frustrations and my responsibility is to put some context around those frustrations and anxieties.

How would your staff describe you?
My most immediate staff would say I’m pretty intense, I want a lot to happen and to be achieved. I am very competitive. I have a high degree of integrity as you have to demonstrate the behaviour that you espouse.
Making new ships is a tremendous undertaking, as well as an exciting and glamorous part of the business, and a lot of us live for that.

After 21 years with the same company and reaching CEO, what’s next?
Richard Fain said I was an ‘elder statesman’!
I try to mix other things – being a parent and having an athletic renaissance. My wife and I have friends around the world. I don’t need to run another business.
I have just finished a three-year stint overseeing foster care for 4,000 children in Miami-Dade [with Our Kids, Inc]. That was an incredible experience, daunting but very positive.
We also had an interlude where we were the biggest user of biofuels and I ended up in Washington DC as part of a group of CEOs looking at the energy industry. We met President Bush in the White House. Some of the things we advocated were in his State of the Union address and led to the Energy Independence and Security Act, which is possibly the most notable achievement of Bush’s time in the White House.

How do US and UK management styles vary?
The British team here are naturally more strategically orientated in the way they talk about things and in their PowerPoint presentations.
One of the more amusing things is the degree of planning and engineering that they put into orchestration, from a picnic to large-scale ship launch.

How is the cruise market overall and in the UK?
We have steadfastly maintained that we are not specially qualified to predict the future. Over the long-term, economic cycles will provide opportunities for business to prosper but we cannot run a business assuming things.
The lifespan of ships is about 30 years, so Oasis of the Seas is being introduced in a down period but we hope she will see more good periods than bad.
We have had to discount more than we would have liked. We would like more pricing power.
The UK has been relatively hard hit but business here is successful – we have Independence of the Seas being based in Southampton year-round [from April 2010] and Universal Orlando Resort theme park and cruise packages for the UK market.
We have pushed forward through the downturn and continue to grow.

What are the biggest challenges facing the UK market?
There are 1.5m cruise passengers a year in the UK cruise market so it is a serious market but the penetration is still lower than in the US.
The challenges are similar to the US – we need to break down the myths and misconceptions and emphasise the phenomenal family holiday options out of Southampton to anywhere in the world.
The average age of cruisers is 43 and has been about that for a decade – we often have multi-generational family units, and they find our cruises are more active than they might have thought.
It may be in the UK that our average age is older but it is coming down as our family message gets over.

What are you most proud of at RCI at the moment?
The totality of effort to bring ships to life and how comprehensive that effort is – I see that all funnelled together.
There are no soft openings with a ship – everyone is going to know when Oasis of the Seas is open for business [first showing in Fort Lauderdale on 20 November, first revenue sailing from 1 December].
There is no other ship that is close, nothing in the cruise industry like it. It will be a phenomenon, with its Central Park and zip wire etc, but it’s the men and women of Royal Caribbean International who make the biggest impact.

Do you cruise for pleasure as well as for work?
My family likes to cruise and my kids push to cruise. If we are bringing in a new ship, I spend so much time onboard it’s hard to add on a cruise holiday.

Where is your favourite place to sail into?
I remember sailing into Rio in the morning, and in and out of Sydney harbour, seeing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and seeing New York, and Hong Kong – they’re very special experiences. The Galapagos islands were unbelievable and Alaska is really special.

What is your favourite other type of holiday and destination?
We like to ski. Our kids learned to ski in Aspen and I have a brother there. We also went to Utah last year which was great.

Which as yet unvisited destination would you like to see?
Lots of places – Patagonia, safaris, South Africa, Ireland, Slovenia.

What are your hobbies?
I like competitive running and am always plotting my next race – I am competitive in my age group.
I have a table tennis lesson once a week and I am a big sports fan of teams from Philadelphia [where he comes from].

Who would you like most to have lunch with and why?
My family. I have two kids, 14 and 13. They’re great fun and the more time I can have with them, the better.

And now for the quickfire round:
Miami Dolphins or New York Giants? The Philadelphia Eagles and Phillies [American football and baseball teams]. The Phillies are defending their World Series champions title
Michelle or Carla? Michelle – she is a fellow Princetonian
Spender or saver? Saver – that’s my role in the family
Beer or wine? It’s close between the two
Seafood or steak? I always have seafood, especially in a steak house
Ice-skating or rock-climbing? Er…table tennis and running. Zip wire would be my activity on a ship