Press Release: Celebrity to Collaborate with Accenture on their Digital Platforms

Hi Everyone,

Celebrity's starting the New Year off, with some very welcome news. Thanks Celebrity !

Thought the following Press Release would be of interest. Hopefully, this means improvements are coming to Celebrity's website, and their other Digital platforms :

Here's the Press Release : https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/celebrity-cruises-to-collaborate-with-accenture-to-bring-modern-luxury-brand-promise-to-its-digital-customer-experience.htm?c=glb_accglbtwt_10001668&n=smc_1015

JANUARY 05, 2016

Celebrity Cruises to Collaborate with Accenture to Bring Modern Luxury Brand Promise to Its Digital Customer Experience

NEW YORK; January 5, 2016 – Seeking new and innovative ways to engage digitally with consumers, premium vacation brand Celebrity Cruises has selected Accenture (NYSE: ACN) to provide digital agency and web technology services. As Celebrity’s digital agency of record, Accenture will craft a digital customer experience designed to differentiate Celebrity Cruises as a global luxury cruise brand.

Celebrity selected Accenture for its expertise in digital strategy, service and experience design, and interactive technology services including personalization, digital marketing, content management system implementation, integration and mobile applications.

“Celebrity Cruises is known for delivering highly intuitive service in a modern luxury environment on our ships, and we want all of our digital properties to do the same,” said Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, President and CEO of Celebrity Cruises. “We are highly focused on how we tell our brand story, and we are excited to have selected Accenture for its ability to bring that story to life through deep, market-leading capability across design and innovation, digital marketing, content and web platforms.”

As the digital agency of record for Celebrity Cruises, Accenture brings digital experience that spans across multiple industries with specific knowledge in the travel industry.

“Accenture is excited to have been selected to help Celebrity Cruises completely redesign the digital customer journey by finding new and innovative ways to engage with its target audience in order to reinforce its modern luxury brand positioning, drive business performance and increase market share,” said Glen Hartman, senior managing director for Accenture Interactive, North America. “We look forward to helping Celebrity increase consumer satisfaction and retention through an integrated, user-friendly and seamless experience.”

For more information on Accenture Travel, please visit: http://www.accenture.com/travel.

About Celebrity Cruises

Celebrity Cruises’ iconic “X” is the mark of modern luxury, with its cool, contemporary design and warm spaces; dining experiences where the design of the venues is as important as the cuisine; and the amazing service that only Celebrity can provide, all created to provide an unmatchable experience for vacationers’ precious time. Celebrity Cruises' 10 ships offer modern luxury vacations visiting all seven continents. Celebrity also presents immersive cruise tour experiences in Alaska and Canada. Celebrity is one of six cruise brands operated by global cruise vacation company Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE, OSE: RCL). For more information, dial 1-800-437-3111, visit http://www.celebritycruises.com, or call your travel agent.

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 approximately 373,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at http://www.accenture.com.

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Well I doubt it could make things any worse.

Just been looking at some cruises, frankly I've given up trying to get a price on what I want.

Good news, but I fear this is only a focus on marketing and not on the customer experience after booking. Let's hope I'm wrong.

Hopefully, with this announcement celebrity has fired everyone in their it department.

Does this press release mean that Accenture is re-designing the Celebrity website? That would be great, but I've only seen the term "agency of record" used before for advertising agencies. :confused:

We will see. Accenture is not exactly in the website business. IMO seems the press release Celebrity could have released would be that they were discontinuing their website. That really and truly would be an improvement over the last few years or almost continuous redesigns that often did not work well and sometimes made things even worse.

Understand their information systems platform for accounting and internal use and that should be good. Do we have any sense of timing on when and more importantly what this is going to look like?

Do not get too excited. I work on a daily basis with Accenture in the automotive industry and they are not very exciting to work with. So, Celebrity's website COULD get worse if this is even possible. So, in this case relax, sip your cocktail and relax. Let's see what happens and enjoy your cruise :-)

Are we to think Celebrity is a global luxury brand now?

of course they are: Quote: Celebrity is one of six cruise brands operated by global cruise vacation company Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE, OSE: RCL).

In layman's terms, can someone please explain what the heck this is going to do for my cruise experience??? :confused:

Can someone explain to me the difference between "modern luxury" and "luxury".

Outside of it being just another marketing theme, what does "modern luxury" actually mean.

I read this as blahblahblah digital marketing.

Can someone explain to me the difference between "modern luxury" and "luxury".

 

Outside of it being just another marketing theme, what does "modern luxury" actually mean.

I believe in this context, it means "less"....as in "less is more".

I read this as blahblahblah digital marketing.

Digital marketing is most likely advertising speak for planning and placing advertising on the internet\ ....the ads that pop up on Google, etc.... and perhaps the effective use of social media sites.

Sadly, it really has little to do with Celebrity's web pages, other than to perhaps tune the marketing portions to mesh with outside ad placements....although I hope that they are misusing the phrase.

While my experience with Royal Caribbean's website is limited (Most of our cruises with RCCL were prior to the digital explosion) we did sail on a family cruise with them 18 months ago. I do not recall any of the issues that I am finding with this Celebrity cruise check in/manage your reservation (yea, right).I am bewildered why RCCL corporate cannot use the systems and/or personnel from the RCCL system to improve Celebrity's website. I prefer the Celebrity experience and ambiance but the website is bad. If frequent guests like myself are complaining what are those new to the line doing?

Here's a novel idea, forget all the corporate double speak and just make it work.

In layman's terms, can someone please explain what the heck this is going to do for my cruise experience??? :confused:

Hi Wine-O,

Of course, none of us know for certain - but, the way I read it, the events described in the Press Release, is probably unrelated to the onboard experience.

Here's a novel idea, forget all the corporate double speak and just make it work.

Yes!!!

Unfortunately, the current corporate heads are all about marketing and don't much seem to care about the customer experience after the customer has succumbed to all the marketing hype.

I see nothing in this press release that indicates that they might be planning a functional website. It's all about marketing. So I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to happen.

If this news is the change which was supposed to make Celebrity customers happy I am feeling rather underwhelmed.

Are we to think Celebrity is a global luxury brand now?

I'm sorry. We can't answer that now. Please check back in 15 minutes. ;)

If this news is the change which was supposed to make Celebrity customers happy I am feeling rather underwhelmed.

Ditto. But that's the way I felt about their last "big news" deal too, so it's not unusual.

In layman's terms, can someone please explain what the heck this is going to do for my cruise experience??? :confused:

It means Celebrity is going to tell Accenture what they want their website and internal data system to do. Accenture will then do a redesign to make it actually work to do those things.

When complete you should really truly be able to make a reservation, check your reservation, book stuff, order luggage tags and all the other things that currently often do not work with almost a 100% probability of things working the first time!

Would guess this will take some months to complete. Would think website would be #1 and be phased in.

Good news, but I fear this is only a focus on marketing and not on the customer experience after booking. Let's hope I'm wrong.

 

Hopefully, with this announcement celebrity has fired everyone in their it department.

amen!

When will this happen?

It means Celebrity is going to tell Accenture what they want their website and internal data system to do. Accenture will then do a redesign to make it actually work to do those things.

 

When complete you should really truly be able to make a reservation, check your reservation, book stuff, order luggage tags and all the other things that currently often do not work with almost a 100% probability of things working the first time!

 

Would guess this will take some months to complete. Would think website would be #1 and be phased in.

Mind sharing with the rest of us where you got this information from? Or are you just surmising?

Like so many things, this is just marketing for marketing sake and even worse an excuse to go after our pocketbooks harder.... but there is good news apparently Celebrity's senior management now gets free stuff from accenture. Solution onboard is not talk but actually spending money on bigger better IT infrastructure and talent, that is the real answer both onboard and with their worthless half-baked web site.

Prepare for accenture to be around for a year or so and then this press release will be nothing but food for a goat (if you print it for them LOL).