In an interview with Marketplace, Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein talked about how cruise vacations are a luxury vacation for the rest of us.

More than 10 million Americans take a cruise for their vacations and it represents a good value for consumers still.

"The United States is still clearly the No. 1... market for cruisers in the world," Goldstein told Marketplace. "There are about 20 million people a year in the world taking a cruise right now and 11 or 12 [million] come from the United States."

"It's definitely become more available, when I got into the business in 1988 we aspired to be a mainstream vacation," Goldstein said. "It's definitely become more accessible but what the last few years of challenges, economically, have posed to us is the need to really get across the value message of what is included in the cruise purchase."

The value of a cruise is a big deal, considering industry market research firm Cruise Market Watch says the typical ticket price for a cruise passenger is $1311 whereas a 2010 American Express survey found the average American family will spend $4,000 on a vacation including airfare.

"First of all, we draw pretty broadly, obviously we offer upscale vacations," Goldstein said. "We are looking at household income of probably something like $75,000 and up generally speaking. The vast majority of our cruisers I would say would be middle and upper-middle class."

In a blog post by Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein, two announcements were made that were direct results of passenger feedback.

First up was the request by Royal Caribbean fans for more Panama Canal cruises. Goldstein announced that Vision of the Seas was slated to originally offer Caribbean cruises will instead sail a set of Panama Canal cruises in the fall and spring.  The new Panama canal cruises will augment the other long Caribbean sailings already on the books.  

In addition, Goldstein announced that Royal Caribbean will offer gluten-free beer by the end of the year in all of its Irish pubs across the fleet.

Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein spoke in Milan, Italy yesterday about new investments, ships, airports and important partnerships.

"For years Italy has played a strategic role in the planning of Royal Caribbean International: Since 2005 we have more than doubled the ports of embarkation in the area, adding to Civitavecchia and Venice also Genoa, Messina and Naples. The arrival of a ship like Liberty of the Seas, which next season will embark from the port of Naples, confirms the company's commitment towards the Italian market, " Goldstein said.  " Even in 2013 Royal Caribbean International will pay particular regard to Italian guests with a special offer on board: from excursions, offering food and beverage, staff of dedicated service, all in an international environment that meets the needs of Italian. "

Coinciding with Goldstein was the debut of two new Royal Caribbean ships in Italy.  Liberty of the Seas will go toItaly for the first time and offer 7-night cruises out of Naples to the Western Caribbean while Legend of the Seas will take the place of Mariner of the Seas and offer 7-night Western Mediterranean cruises out of Civitavecchia and from Genoa to France and Spain.

"The ships dedicated to the Italian market in 2013 are the most innovative in the fleet," adds John Rotondo, CEO of Royal Caribbean, Italy "In 2013 there will be 5 ports of embarkation and 13 ports of call in Italy for four ships of the fleet Royal Caribbean International, for a total of 18 ports, 330 airports and more than 850,000 passenger movements, a further indication of the fact that Italy is a very important basin for. "

In a blog post by Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein, Royal Caribbean says it will increase the number of cabanas offered for rent on its private island of Labadee.

Goldstein says the increase is due to the warm reception its guests have shown the option and will go from the initial 20 cabanas currently on the island's Barefoot Beach club area to construct four more water cabanas there.  

Royal Caribbean will also add 16 new cabanas at Nellie's Beach for a total of 40 cabanas for rental at Labadee.

In addition, Royal Caribbean now offers 3 wheelchair accessible cabanas in Labadee.

The Costa Concordia disaster has prompted Royal Caribbean's CEO Adam Goldstein to post a blog entry about the incident and what Royal Caribbean is and has been doing to keep guests safe.

"Safety is a journey rather than a destination. We need to operate safely now yet constantly improve our safety. We need to hunt for lessons learned in every minor incident or accident. We need to apply those lessons learned across the fleet ASAP. This is a never ending cycle."

Goldstein said that half of the fleet's Captains and most of Royal Caribbean's Hotel Directors were meeting in South Florida over the weekend to discuss safety both today and in the future.  Goldstein promised to review all of Royal Caribbean's safety processes, technology and people to ensure no catastrophes befall Royal Caribbean.

Goldstein also promised more information to the public on what Royal Caribbean is doing to keep its ships and passengers safe, "In the upcoming weeks we will communicate by text and video about many of the key elements of safety. Many readers who know us well will not be surprised by our focus on and commitment to safety. Those who have less experience with us should learn some interesting and compelling facts about how we prepare our ships and crew for safe operation every day."

Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein was interviewed by Forbes in a group of CEOs to evaluate how they connect with their customers.  Here are Adam's answers.

What is your primary customer metric?
“Our primary customer metric is called the secured guest index. And it’s a top one out of five box on enjoyed the experience; we’ll tell other people about it; we’ll do it again. So we are looking at the percentage of people who are in the top one of each of those three.”

As CEO, how do you connect with customers?
“A small example of something that people would not expect from me or from the CEO is that I’m able to take advantage of my passion for table tennis. I’ll spend a couple of hours playing anybody who wants to play me one after another. And it’s just amazing, the response of the people. They want to try — sometimes they’re great, sometimes they’re terrible. But they just want to play the CEO in table tennis.”

How do you measure results?
“The iron discipline of immediate customer feedback. We get approximately a 50% response rate on the customer satisfaction survey that we hand out at the end of the cruise. The division heads and the hotel director and the captain if necessary are seeing exactly what the feedback of the customers were in detail by area for the vacation that ended in the morning and now they have to get ready for the vacation that’s starting for a new group of 6,000 people that afternoon. And that discipline has been in place for 40 plus years and it really informs the commitment to excellence that sustains the product day in and day out.”

How do your view social media?
“The social media age, we really feel was somehow created for our benefit. And what social media has demonstrated is that people are more interested in pure opinion than anything. We really try not to come into the dialog directly. So I think at my level it’s looking for patterns that suggest issues that I’m quite keen on. We ended up in a global controversy for our decision to keep the ships going to Haiti after the earthquake two years ago, what we found was that social media in general, and my blog in particular was where we were able to speak with the voice on the issue, that was unconstrained by the formalities of press releases.”

Talk about your global focus.
“Our business is in the full bloom of transition from an industry that was principally for middle and upper middle class Americans to take 7-night cruises in the Caribbean to an industry where everybody is cruising from everywhere and traveling to cruise everywhere. One of our fixed brands called (Croisières de France), is essentially a little piece of France floating around the Mediterranean, where everything is in French language, served by French people, French cuisine, French entertainment, French everything. There are a lot of French people who prefer that environment. There are some French people who would like to be in the Royal Caribbean International global environment.”

Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein spoke with the media following meetings with New South Wales, Australian authorities.  Goldstein urged the leaders in New South Waves to do more, as they have "not fully taken on" the responsibility they have for the future of the cruising industry in Australia because of local issues.

Goldstein feels that Australia is starting to realize the economic benefits cruising brings to the country but it needs to do more to secure its spot.  Goldstein said he has witnessed a "greater determination" by Australia since his last visit in 2009 but there's still more the country can do.

“I am not sure that New South Wales fully understands how critical it is that the cruising equation be right here in Sydney not only for its own benefit but for the benefit of the country,” he said. “Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and other cities will all benefit if Sydney is a robust hub of the cruise wheel but I don’t think the leadership in New South Wales has fully taken that on yet. They are very focused on their own issues and their own opportunities rather than viewing it in a more holistic way.”

Goldstein did say Royal Caribbean was involved in "preliminary discussions" about long term infrastructure issues as well as “touching on a number” of possible solutions, but declined to elaborate any further.

Today in Milan, Royal Caribbean's CEO Adam Goldstein met with the Chairman of Dulbecco Telethon Institute, Luca Cordero Di Montezemolo, to support DTI's work in researching cures for genetic diseases.  Royal Caribbean donated 70,000 euros to DTI at the ceremony.

"Our commitment in Italy wants to be global," said Goldstein, "And this means also investing in social responsibility. Meet with President Montezemolo was a time of sharing of common visions, in the common desire to continue to work together. " 

The willingness to invest in social responsibility and the presence of Adam Goldstein in Italy confirmed that Royal Caribbean's attention turns to the Italian market, along with France and Spain, in 2012 will be the focus of the European strategy with more ships, new ports of embarkation and investments in communication.

The growth in Italy Royal Caribbean's stated clearly in the numbers: in 2006 there were 4 ships were calling at Italian ports but in 2012, there will be 11, with the number of passengers more than tripled.

Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein has returned from a trip aboard Oasis of the Seas for an on-site evaluation of what's happening not only aboard the ship but he took a careful look at the operations at Labadee (Royal Caribbean's private island) and Falmouth, Jamaica.

Adam seemed pleased with how Oasis of the Seas was running and thought things were going well.   He did seem to have an issue with the art program aboard Oasis of the Seas, presumably related to the art auctions, "I did state in no uncertain terms that I was less than pleased with certain aspects of our art program."

While on Labadee Adam felt that things went exceedingly well and found the operation at Royal Caribbean's private beach to be top notch.  That being said, he thinks Royal Caribbean can do more to market Labadee and prepare its guests for what's waiting for them, "My takeaway is we need to do an even better job of marketing what Labadee is. I spoke to someone who had visited a number of the cruise industry’s private destinations prior to coming to Labadee. He said he and his people were just not prepared for how much there is at Labadee."

At Falmouth, Adam characterized the progress at the port as "90% done".  He mentioned that the most important task left to do here is to complete construction of the arrival/departure terminal building, which should have been done by now but Adam says it will be done in September.

In terms of merchants, Adam says Royal Caribbean expects 70% of the available retail space to be occupied in the next few weeks.  He also hinted that some new restaurants will be added in the near-future.

One of the most debated topics when it comes to Royal Caribbean is where it decides to deploy its fleet.  Royal Caribbean's CEO Adam Goldstein shared some insight into the process of determining where and why its cruise ships are sent for any given season.

The process begins with the group of people whose job it is to figure it all out.  Adam Goldstein is joined by Royal Caribbean's Director of Deployment and Itinerary Planning Chris Allen and Royal Caribbean's VP of Corporate Planning Jason Liberty.  Both of their teams coordinate with Adam to figure out the best plan of action.  

Allen's team identifies the right place for each ship on each day of each year as well as understanding the economics (i.e., profitability) of every decision Royal Caribbean make with their fleet.  Meanwhile Liberty's group evaluates ship profitability from its own perspective.

Goldstein summarized the 2012 fleet deployment as follows

• 11 ships in Europe
• 2 ships in Asia
• 2 ships in Alaska
• 2 ships in the Northeast U.S
• 2 ships in the Bahamas
• 3 ships in the Caribbean

Adam did concede a mistake Royal Caribbean made when it announced Voyager of the Seas deployment to China, specifically not preparing customers who had booked Voyager of the Seas previously as well as their travel agents.  Adam promises a mistake like this will not happen again.