How Royal Caribbean turned guest insights into business growth

Royal Caribbean had a billion-dollar mobile app, millions of users, and a problem: It wasn't hearing enough from the people using it.

The cruise company's digital transformation had been impressive. What began as a digital version of the paper itinerary guests received onboard had evolved into a year-round travel companion. Guests could book vacations, reserve restaurants, purchase excursions, and manage their experience before, during, and after sailing.

The app was used by guests in 95% of staterooms. More than 15 product teams were building features for it.

But something was missing.

"We were missing the heart of the customer," said Heather Bishop, Vice President of Digital Product at Royal Caribbean Group, during a presentation at Crafted London in September.

Royal Caribbean had plenty of quantitative data. Analytics showed what guests clicked, purchased, and abandoned. Surveys captured their opinions after the fact.

What the company lacked was a scalable way to understand why guests behaved as they did, preferably before new features reached them.

The answer wasn't another dashboard. It was talking to people.

Watch this presentation and others from Crafted Seattle and Crafted London. Register for Insight+ and start watching today.

When product development outpaces research

For Royal Caribbean, traditional guest research presented an unusual logistical challenge.

Getting researchers onboard a cruise ship requires approvals, accommodations, coordination with crew members, and somewhere to conduct interviews. From preparation through analysis, a study could take six to 12 weeks.

That's a long time when product teams are working in two-week sprints.

Melinda Carbonell, Lead UX Researcher for Digital Product at Royal Caribbean Group, faced another constraint: Her UX research team consisted of just two people.

They couldn't spend their lives aboard cruise ships. Nor could they realistically support more than 15 product teams using traditional research methods alone.

The solution was to rethink how research happened.

With UserTesting, Royal Caribbean moved from occasional qualitative studies to rapid, repeatable usability testing embedded in product development.

The difference was substantial.

Research results arrived in an average of two hours after launching a study. A typical usability test could be completed within a two-week product sprint.

And within a year, Royal Caribbean had scaled its UX research practice tenfold.

"With UserTesting in my pocket and a little bit of enthusiasm, I was able to get this result," Mel explained.

The important change wasn't simply conducting more studies. It was making customer feedback available while teams could still act on it.

The business case for listening earlier

UX researchers have long argued that testing early prevents expensive mistakes. But getting executives to prioritize research often requires something more persuasive than a good argument.

Numbers help.

Royal Caribbean reported several improvements as qualitative research became more deeply embedded in its product development process:

• 26% increase in app stickiness, reflecting more frequent engagement.
• 15-point increase in Net Promoter Score, a measure of customer willingness to recommend.
• Approximately 1% increase in commerce conversion, meaningful for an app generating more than $1 billion in revenue.

These results don't establish that usability testing alone caused every improvement. But they demonstrate what happened as Royal Caribbean made guest feedback a more consistent part of product decisions.

For Heather, the shift became visible in executive meetings.

"We used to kind of push these upon them, and now they're saying, 'Oh, I want to see the research for that.'"

That's an important distinction.

Research was no longer something the UX team had to sell. It was becoming something business leaders expected.

How to make UX research part of the culture

Technology made scaling UX research possible. Relationships made it sustainable.

Mel understood that delivering faster insights wouldn't automatically change how people worked.

She needed allies.

Early on, she met with leaders responsible for digital analytics and quantitative A/B testing. Together, they identified where their responsibilities overlapped and where qualitative research could contribute something different.

Analytics could reveal which experiences weren't performing. UX research could explain why.

"When you start to solve people's problems, they become your champion," Mel said.

She also made research visible before decisions were finalized.

Her team joined five recurring weekly and monthly meetings involving product, analytics, and leadership. These conversations gave researchers visibility into upcoming work and allowed them to share findings before features shipped.

For organizations struggling to establish a research culture, Mel's approach offers three practical lessons:

1. Make research fast enough to influence decisions. Insights delivered after launch have less opportunity to prevent costly rework.
2. Build partnerships around shared problems. Research becomes valuable when it helps other teams answer questions they cannot answer alone.
3. Get involved before decisions are made. A seat at the planning table matters more than a presentation after the product ships.

The result was a cultural shift, not merely a faster research process.

The real measure of better research

Royal Caribbean's story offers a useful reminder for organizations pursuing digital transformation.

Speed matters. Scale matters. Business outcomes certainly matter.

But the purpose of customer experience research isn't to produce more reports or fill another dashboard.

It's to understand the human experience behind the numbers.

For Royal Caribbean, that means recognizing that someone using its app isn't merely completing a transaction. They're planning a vacation, perhaps one they've saved for years.

The digital experience should reflect the same care the company puts into welcoming guests aboard its ships.

And that requires more than analytics.

As Mel reminded the audience at Crafted London, "It's not data that delights people. It's people that delight people."

Additional resources

• How to democratize and scale user feedback — In this on-demand webinar, you'll learn how to expand access to customer insights, overcome resource constraints, and make UX research more strategic across your organization. 
• The complete guide to usability testing — This guide explores usability testing methods, practical templates, and techniques for gathering actionable feedback throughout product development. 
• The path to continuous insight: How to scale (or democratize) experience research — A practical guide to expanding research capacity and making customer insights part of everyday business decisions. 
• Measuring the ROI of customer insights — In this Insights Unlocked episode, Dave Kerry explains how UX teams can demonstrate research's business value through revenue growth, cost savings, and risk reduction. 
• A blueprint for scaling UX research — In this blog post, research operations experts share practical strategies for scaling research and increasing its influence on organizational decisions. 
• Democratizing UX: Spread research insights through your organization — In this blog post, discover how to share research findings beyond the UX team and build a stronger customer-centered culture.