Carnival Cruise Lines
It is a strange reality that part of what made Carnival Cruise Lines the spirit of a "Fun Ship" came about because of how their vessel ran aground on its maiden voyage. The company literally used that experience to propel itself forward into a successful business model (442). Now it must live with the reality that when a similar mistake occurred, innocent customers perished. And there is no getting around the fact that this event will challenge every otherwise successful element of its bottom line and reputation and force it, like Wal-Mart did, take another look at the strategies for the future. Only now Carnival has to do so in the beginning of a massive organizational disaster centering on the Costa Concordia (Lazarus, 2012).
But the fact is that mistakes of judgment (whether from a given incident or as a result of a business strategy) happen, and that does not necessarily dome the company to failure. There is ample evidence that consumers like businesses that aggressively go after a mid-level consumer market and often this massive target group a unique promise or service. This is why Terry Thornton took pride in his characterization of Carnival Cruise lines as the Wal-Mart of tourist travel. Sometimes starting a "backwards business revolution" pays off. As Kaufman (2009) said in her article...
On the one hand, the mega-retailer is vilified for transforming the nature of international trade and abusing employees. On the other hand, strategists tip their hats to a business model that propelled the retailer from small-town obscurity to commercial super power and attracted even one of the staunchest democrats, Hillary Clinton, to its board."
Carnival got its start in a similar way and has lived through the ups and downs of trying to make its own space in its sector. Under normal environmental variations, even the current challenging one, the company would likely have no problem looking forward to possibilities just as the rest of the cruise line sector of tourist travel is (CLIA, 2010). With the failure of the company to respond well to the Italian disaster, the implications are less easy to identify. But still, the company can still look back on the solid business foundation that it built and trust that, like Wal-Mart, it will be able to move forward.
Carnival has over its history set itself on a specific course designed to attract a market of customers comfortable paying a reasonable price (relatively speaking, about the same as a regular hotel) for at least decent services. In the mind of their…
