For Jason Liberty, Chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Group, the future of cruising isn’t just about building bigger ships. It’s about building a smarter ecosystem. In a recent interview, Liberty revealed how the company is leveraging artificial intelligence to transform its operations, moving from a transactional business model to one obsessed with a singular goal: turning a “vacation of a lifetime into a lifetime of vacations.” Liberty explained how he’s driving this: “We’re massive users of AI in a non-creepy way.”
Liberty said Royal Caribbean is deploying AI to streamline everything from pricing to food production. For instance, Royal Caribbean is close to reducing its food waste by 50% through predictive modeling. “Now we can predict how many hamburgers we should be producing every 15 minutes,” he said, describing the company as a “petri dish” for practical technology use cases.
Such moves are paying off as Royal Caribbean stock is up 15% over the last month on the back of bumper earnings of $17.5 billion last year. Liberty told investors that 2026 is off to a “great start” with trips already two-thirds booked for the year.
Royal Caribbean is outperforming its peers in one of the hottest sectors of the tourism industry, Liberty said, in part because of its focus on upmarket cruise experiences on mega ships and private island clubs like CocoCay in the Bahamas and Haiti’s Labadee.
