Collaboration Not Competition: Meeting Design Challenges for Cruise and Hospitality Amid Pandemic
There’s no question that in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the cruise and hospitality industries had to innovate and think about designing a new future.
In this webinar hosted by Tillberg Design of Sweden, Madelene Hall and Per Eriksson chop it up with ICRAVE’s Lionel Ohayon, DADO’s Greg Walton and TDoS’s Fredrik Johansson.
Click to watch, or read the full transcript below.
Madelene Hall (00:00:06):
It is three o'clock at least here in Sweden. So I'd like to welcome you all to today's webinar, Collaboration not Competition. We have some of the most brilliant and creative minds in the industry with us today ready to discuss. My name is Madelene Hall, and I'm your host today. I'm acting CEO of Tillberg Design of Sweden. And with me, we have Per Eriksson that you've met in previous webinars, our sustainability director.
If you have any questions during this webinar, then please write them in the chat where Per will be able to see them, and then we can forward them to our panelists. This webinar is of course also being recorded so you can watch it later. But now I'm really proud to introduce our panelists of the day. We have Greg Walton, founding partner and CEO of Studio Dado. His and the studio's passion for cruise ship interior design is really well known and much celebrated. Greg's knack for purposeful design made a transition into hospitality and cruise ships seamless one stemming from work in 1989 on the original Crown Princess. Welcome Greg, it's great to have you.
Then we have Lionel Ohayan, the founder and CEO of ICRAVE, leading design firm based in New York City. ICRAVE they create award-winning work spanning from healthcare to air travel crews, and a lot more. Lionel is also very passionate about fostering creativity in the world around us through his work of course, but also through several nonprofit initiatives, welcome Lionel.
Lionel Ohayon (00:01:47):
Thank you.
Madelene Hall (00:01:47):
Then we have Fredrik Johansson, partner and executive director with Tillberg Center Sweden. Fredrik's interest in beautiful design can of course be seen through his work, but also through the many vintage pieces that he owns from motorbikes to [inaudible 00:02:03] and everything. Being from the country of Ikea, functionality is also at the core of Fredrik's design. Hello, Fredrik.
Fredrik Johannson (00:02:11):
Hello everyone. Hi, [inaudible 00:02:17].
Madelene Hall (00:02:17):
Chris Finch from ADA associates unfortunately could not make it today. However, today's starting point is the one that he suggested. So together in this virtual room today, we have about 100 years of combined experience. If we instead look back 100 years in time, the Spanish flu and tuberculosis killed millions. And at that time, the Bauhaus Manifesto was created with a design that told a story about clean and hygienic spaces. Looking at history, what can and should be the role of architects and designers in times when standards change. Lionel, any thoughts on topic?
Lionel Ohayon (00:03:05):
Thank you. It's a very interesting topic and it's something that we think about a lot and especially right now post COVID-19. I'm not sure with post COVID-19 actually, but thinking about the world post COVID-19. I think that it's important to imagine what architects go in through [inaudible 00:03:30]. The impact architects have on the way that we live, the cities that we build and the compulsion's and the interactions that humans have is kind of ebb and flow of society, and how we meet, and how we convene, and how we work. And what kind of neighborhoods we choose to have.
And I think that the big challenge for architecture today, and it's been probably through the end of the 20th century and now is the 21st century. Are there new challenges that architects have to face as ingredients to the work that we can because if we're going to [inaudible 00:04:06], we really need to understand the inputs, and the inputs are different. We have different tools. We have different ways that we communicate. We have different systems that humans interact with that aren't built completely in a physical world.
So a lot of our work is talking about how our physical and digital worlds are colliding, and what the impact of physical space is when we live part of the lives in the virtual world. And one of the things that I think is important for us as a practice and I speak about this a lot is to understand our responsibility, to include that digital interface into the solution sets that we provide. When a client comes and asks us for a solution, what is our responsibility to them to give a solution that includes experience of the digital world.
For example, if part of your experience is a hotel, your first experience of the hotel will be probably digitally, and your interaction with it for a long period of time, probably longer ... Cruise ships is a perfect example. Cruise ships, you might book a cruise ship a year in advance. When we worked on a Disney Cruise ship, one of the things that we talked about was how can we get kids who may be reluctant participants, a teenager going on a Disney Cruise ship probably has a younger brother or sister.
And so they're probably being dragged to a Disney Cruise ship, and they probably don't want to tell their friends in high school, they're going to a Disney Cruise ship. We want it to figure out as architects and designers, how can that should be a transformational filter so that they can come on the ship reluctantly, and they can leave inspired and more creative because of Disney, because of what Disney does and how to do Disney things. And one of the things that we told them in 2007 was use Facebook and use ... What was that? What was the big famous meetup? Like what was it called again? The other one, I can't even remember anymore. It was the biggest social media platform.
Madelene Hall (00:06:10):
[inaudible 00:06:10] maybe.
Lionel Ohayon (00:06:10):
No, in 2007 there was ... Anyway, somebody must know the answer. I feel silly that I can't come up with-
Per Eriksson (00:06:19):
Was it Myspace?
Lionel Ohayon (00:06:20):
These platforms and introduce the kids on the ship to each other now so that they don't spend the first day of their three day or seven day cruise or the first two days or three days being shy or cliquey or being in different ... Myspace was the one I was talking about. It was Myspace. So use those platforms where kids already have a profile to say, "Hey these are the people who will be on a cruise ship at the same time as you." They can get to know each other. So when they arrive six months later, eight months later on that ship, they were able to say, "Oh yeah, hey we're friends, we've known each other for the last six to eight months."
So that's a microcosm of an answer to your bigger question where it's like, we can change people's habits and their ability to interact with each other. As designers, the way we think about societies and how we work together. If we start to embrace the technologies around us, that can change experience that people have in place. In spaces.
And so one of the things that I was talking about in another discussion earlier this month was we have to make a decision about where we want to come out of this pandemic or this time in society as a group of thinkers. And say, this is the group of thinkers that are going to affect change, and we're going to do so because we're going to come up with solutions that are going to answer how society should act in these environments. And it's going to change the way that we think about our hospitals. And the way we think about our cities and what it means to be a citizen in the city.
In America, you don't have compulsory army requirement. You don't have to go to the army for two years like many of the countries in Europe, and all over the world. But maybe there's a civic duty that makes you responsible for understanding what your role is in a city like New York, if something like a pandemic happens, or your civic duty in the event of unrest, or your civic duty in understanding instead of a hospital becoming like an emergency center, one of your arena or your schools or your town hall, that those things actually have been pre engineered to allow for the city to change without disrupting everyone's workflow and how everybody lives.
So there are big, big challenges. What I fear in our world today is that the design community is getting smaller, and smaller and smaller in terms of what it believes its lane of authority is. And I think that that's a dangerous void to leave. If big thinkers and big ideas, don't come from people who understand in a broad sense, that architecture is really about the interactions and the cities we live in, and those connections. It's not just about the building itself.
So I think just to wrap that up, I think like historically architects have taken central roles in shaping our world and in shaping society. And it's super important that people see that as a central part of our communities responsibility looking forward.
Madelene Hall (00:09:39):
Thank you so much for that. Fredrik, your 5 cents.
Fredrik Johannson (00:09:46):
My 5 cents I think what Lionel said is pretty spot on. I mean, in our pretty unique role as designers and architects, we have kind of the overview of the bigger picture. We are quite often involved as master planners or having the bigger picture in front of us ... And by understanding the whole value chain. I think it's essential if we want to do a good job, we can also have the list situation very effectively by looking at everything from start to finish, I would say in this case, from the guest experience back to the whole value chain, back to profitability in the end.
So I think that's how our role and our opportunity is to take one step forward, become ... And perhaps an even more central player in the products that we're working in by offering our deeper understanding of this value chain, as opposed to just being interior designers or architects, we can offer so much more sort of our overview positions or so. That makes sense?
Lionel Ohayon (00:10:57):
Yeah. Certainly.
Greg Walton (00:11:02):
But I would like to say one of the things that struck me on this is there's a lot of I think opportunities that are being presented to us as architects and designers, from this pandemic that we need to open our eyes and sort of recognize that they're being presented. And it really sort of hit home to me actually last night, a friend of mine who lives in San Diego was telling me about certain streets that have been temporarily closed to allow restaurants to expand their outdoor seating because of social distancing.
And we have the same issue happening here in Miami Beach with Ocean Drive. It's now been closed to automobile traffic to allow all the restaurants to expand, and there's something that's very positive about that happening. And there's an opportunity that needs ... That's been presented in front of us as architects and designers, to look at the world like you were saying, Lionel at cities. And what are things that can be done like that, expanding public spaces to allow dispersed seating for restaurants, et cetera.
And I think we as architects and designers need to keep our eye not so much focused on ... I don't want to say the negative aspects that come out of this pandemic of we got to like wash our hands, and wear a mask and all of that. But the other kind of opportunities that are being presented, and even from an environmental perspective, and sustainable perspective, there's a lot of things that we're seeing because of the fact that a lot of us have been for several months now in a stay at home situation. And we've all learned, and this is a perfect example of it right now that we're doing, is we've all learned to work at home and communicate using Webex, Teams, Zoom, what ... Some type of platform.
And I was ... Yesterday when we were talking, joking, it's made me question, why do we need an office? Why do people need to be getting in their cars every day and traveling an hour or more commuting, and adding pollution to the environment? So I think there's things that are right there in front of our eyes, right in front of our faces that it's being shown as an example of this pandemic, that we need to take advantage of and learn. It's teaching ... The pandemic is giving us lessons to learn from and opportunities that will change our world for the better.
Lionel Ohayon (00:14:05):
Well, I think to your point, Greg, this is just it. We've been in this ... We've created a world let's call it post industrial revolution for sure where traffic was a quagmire that nobody could solve. With all the technology, with all that mankind has developed and evolved. We cannot solve for traffic because we built a convention that people have to work in an environment together on a clock that starts at exactly the same time for everybody, and finishes at exactly the same time for everybody.
And it would seem a pretty simple problem to solve across the world. But somehow that convention has been so strong and that we haven't been able to solve one. So now that I say the license didn't exist to work from home. Like my office, where I was like, yeah, I work from home, it's cool. But nobody would do it because culturally it's just ... Technologically the next morning we had everything and I was surprised that we were all good. We all got a phone call from the studio. We're all set, we're ready to go. I was like, we don't have to buy anything. We don't need anything. Like no, we got it.
So we've had the technology for a long time. What we didn't have was the license. So now as a society, we've proven that things can be different. Can it be exactly the way it is now? Probably not because everyone's kind of stuck at home, so it's different than just choosing to be at home. But I think that the question is who's going to take the reins and make decisions about what does it look like? What does the future look like?
And who has the kind of likes the ... I don't want to call it the authority, but certainly, Fredrik was saying the overview, who's got the perspective to be able to say well maybe what we're learning from this is let's solve for traffic because work from home could not necessarily just be about the individual work office. It can be a bigger problem solver that talks about the environment, that talks about quality of life, work life balance, mothers being and fathers being able to spend more time with their kids, all those amazing things.
And is right now it's a question of who's going to grab the reins and go with it. You know what I mean? And I think like that's to me the critical message, is like this is your opportunity, our opportunity to get into that conversation and not be left on the outside of it by actually drawing it and envisioning it. We have all these platforms to like tell the world, "Hey, I have an idea and just push it out there."
And I think that that's an important conversation that could be profound, instead of like you got hand washing stations everywhere. We just did a hospital, like you got to wash your hands. At some point, society has to accept that that's a reality, but why should you wash your hands? But that's not an evolution of society. I think we have an opportunity not to miss.
Fredrik Johannson (00:17:08):
That's a great point. I think what both you and Greg said, if we get this right, I think we can ... As designers that design community and together with all our clients and all the other experts, I feel we can help to make less your traveling possible also in the future, which is what people want after all. They want to get together. They want to go somewhere else and explore the world and all that.
Maybe we can help doing that by ... And at the same time, we can turn all these necessary actions that we have to do into an even better guest experience in end. So like you said, Greg you said you're moving all the seats out on the street. And Lionel you said if we could rethink the traffic, the programming of our daily life. So if you look at the ship as a city, it's imagine you could reprogram some of the daily life on the ship.
So you don't get that 25% effect where all the people are moving around on 25% of the ship space at any one time, but you actually you spread them more evenly over the ship over the day also. Then that would become a better guest experience that you could probably get. You wouldn't have to have less people on board. You could possibly even get more people on board, but still have less congestion, and less queues and everything.
Greg Walton (00:18:25):
Probably like rushing to the buffet restaurant all at nine o'clock in the morning, 3000 guests trying to get in there, spreading it ... Changing how that whole sort of programming of the passengers' daily experiences is done. We've been personally got talking a lot about even drilling down into the small detail. And when you think about the guest stateroom, and really how do you take the things that we need to do to make the guests feel safer about their travel experience, but not make it in a way that it's sort of in your face that this is obvious, but what you're saying, Fredrik is exactly that how do you make it where the guest experience is actually enhanced?
But at the same time it is actually solving an issue with a pandemic or with COVID-19, but the guest doesn't perceive it that way. They perceive it as wow, this is really cool. This is much different than I expected. We even said like in the shower, what if you stepped into the shower and there was a sensor that automatically the water came on at the right temperature, and you didn't have to touch the faucet, the tap to turn the water on or anything like that. You as a guest would perceive that this is really cool. This is so different, and it's better for me because I step in, the water comes on at the right temperature. It's there and I don't have to think about it.
So it's how can we as designers and architects really take these things and use it as a way to enhance the guest experience versus well, we're putting signs everywhere, wash your hands after you touched the tap or something like that. It really becomes not in your face kind of thing, but it's really making your experience on board the ship better, and more unique, and different and something that you really enjoy.
Lionel Ohayon (00:20:58):
I think that's a really good point. And to me, those solutions really fall into three buckets. There's physical solutions, which is like how do you actually design the spaces and does that change? Then there's digital, you're seeing digital interfaces and allow people to keyless entry and pay without touching credit cards and ways that you can leverage existing technology, turn on your faucet, choose your settings, whatever that might be and wearing some sort of RFID or RTLS technology so that it follows you around the ship.
And then so you have the physical, digital, and then the operational, which is like, what's the experience? How are we going to operate the ship? So that like you said, like maybe we can spread people around or maybe we can introduce ship environments that are not like hotel environments on land. It's like this is a ship, have we seen a ship that's just completely turned it on its ear. And so, well now you're on a ship. So therefore everything that you knew when you were on land is different, let's reinvent the whole experience.
I would love to be invited to that conversation, but these three things that are like the physical, the digital and the operational. In there kind of like degrees are all going to be like that makeup of what that solution is going to be I think-
Madelene Hall (00:22:19):
[crosstalk 00:22:19] think. And looking at those three aspects, where do you think architects and designers can have greatest contribution [crosstalk 00:22:30].
Lionel Ohayon (00:22:32):
I really, really, really want to encourage people to understand that all three of those are directly important to delivering on the solution that our group of designers and architects should be delivering. If you fall short on any one of those, you can think you're just not doing the full job. You have to be in the conversation. It doesn't mean you have to be all of a sudden hiring digital people, but you have to understand the impact of that into the guests experience. And you have to be part of that conversation from the very, very beginning. I think it's critical.
Madelene Hall (00:23:07):
Greg, you were saying something as well.
Greg Walton (00:23:10):
No, I was thinking exactly what Lionel was getting ready to say, but he just said that I said, all three. You cannot do one without the other, and to not understand that we have to be in all working within all three of those buckets, so to speak. It's crucial and it's important, and it's really also helping us convey that message to our clients as well.
That's it's the earlier they bring us in, to help them these kinds of solutions, it's advantageous because there's things that we all bring as experience from other types of projects that we do, be outside of the cruise industry that we're involved in, and things that we're seeing from different building types or different project types. And what's transpiring there that can really inform the process in the cruise design that the cruise company may not be aware that occurring outside of their industry.
Lionel Ohayon (00:24:26):
I'll tell you an interesting thing. We just opened a hospital for Memorial Sloan Kettering just in January and it's a cancer facility. So someone had asked someone there, what are you going to do to change the way the hospital was designed? They said, "We're not doing anything. The hospital was designed in an acute environment where the people who are part of the hospital community understand the importance of hygiene. They get it because they're either a doctor or they're a staff member, or they're a patient, or they're a caregiver."
So just behaviorally because they understand it. The things that we had done, the hand washing stations and the protocol inside of the hospital, as it was designed by us and the other architects involved in the project solved. So behaviorally that group knows. Now you have a group of people going on cruise ships, who they need to adopt the behavior from the starting point, so that you can get on with the next layer.
And I think that's true across society and probably we'll have to learn certain things that aren't about putting plastic walls between two people eating dinner, that's just not viable as it should moving forward. So I think behavior's a big part of this thing.
Greg Walton (00:25:48):
And I think the thing too is ... We're all talking about the current situation, will all the rules change once there's a vaccine? Most definitely. I'm not going to walk into my local supermarket and have a plastic barrier between me and the cashier once there's a vaccine and everyone takes the vaccine. But there is a sort of a cautionary note to all of this that I feel is important and that is, this isn't the last pandemic we're going to face, and they're going to become more frequent.
It's going to become, I think, more of a continued sort of way of life ... So with each new one that comes out there's to be this period of time until there is a vaccine, or until that virus has exhausted its food supply, so to speak and disappears that we're going to have these transition times.
So I always ... I bring into the conversation all the time, the cautionary note, yes. Once we have a vaccine doesn't mean we can go back to the way we were because who knows what comes next? And we've all witnessed in a short history Ebola, SARS, et cetera. They haven't spread to the point as COVID-19 has. But it's just telling us that there's more to come.
Madelene Hall (00:27:36):
Absolutely. So if we look at the future with or without vaccine, I probably even dare to say without vaccine, but for a theoretical purpose, which innovations, especially from a cruise perspective, do you think will take a leap say in the next year or so, and that will be here to stay. Fredrik, any of it?
Fredrik Johannson (00:28:00):
I think Lionel has said a lot about technology already, which I think is going to have an important part, but also the behavioral component is perhaps equally important and I guess we're going to use technology to change behaviors next time. But both will have to go hand in hand, I think. So maybe it's, I mean, the innovation [inaudible 00:28:22] and all that is there and will continue to be developed.
There's also a lot of surface treatments and stuff you can put on and there's technical solutions to most things. But we also don't know, I mean, the only thing we know as Greg said, is that there's going to be another pandemic in a few years. So it's probably a lot about preventing infections are spreading right now, what we can do at this time, but also make sure we are ready for next time, we're better prepared next time.
And so maybe less about super point innovation and it's more about rethinking a few things. So if, for instance, there's ... I mean, imagine this virus would have been completely lethal, like an Ebola virus or something. You would be on a ship and you will have to isolate people completely on the ship from each other, the sick from the healthy ones. Then you would have to isolate people in their own deck or their own fire zones or something.
So I guess the ships will have to be lined so that we can in the future isolate people completely from each other, for instance. It's probably more about rethinking some of the let's say infrastructure and architecture and how we program the daily life and how people move on the ship, how we embark the ship and how we handle the food and how we can maintain some kind of social distancing if we want to ... Voluntarily social distancing [inaudible 00:29:50]. I think it's more about that than super advanced innovation.
It's more about rethinking certain things and one of the mindset almost. So if we change ... If we can by designing things or whichever way we can change behavior. So instead of for instance hiding all the hand wash stations away like we always do, because they're ugly and [inaudible 00:30:13]. We turn them into something sexy, it's a little [inaudible 00:30:20] into something beautiful, essential there is a nice fragrance to it. And people ... You do it because it's a nice thing to do. It's not because you have to, it's something beautiful. If we can rethink a lot of things like that on the ships it's [inaudible 00:30:41].
Lionel Ohayon (00:30:41):
It's a real quagmire for cruising. I mean I saw this hospital room of the future that we didn't design, but we had a really interesting innovation in that the sink in the room, which was obviously a touchless faucet had a red glow ... Excuse me, had a red LED glowing. When someone walked in the room, the water would turn on and it wouldn't turn green until the person washed their hands for 30 seconds. And so it shamed you really, it was like a shaming device, like if there's a patient in the bed and there's a sink there with a red light and you don't wash your hands. Kind of like, there's this elephant in the room being like go turn the light green by washing your hands.
And it's very compelling as a concept about how you use design to compel people to behave in a certain way. Obviously I agree 100% with you, Fredrik. It should become part of the ritual. There are ceremonial rituals in different religions that we wash your hands and make a prayer or whatever you do in different ceremonies before you sit down and eat.
And those are probably partially religious and partially just cultural for people getting sick over thousands of years. But I think that that's going to be ... We have clients right now that we're going back into projects that we're designing, and we're like, let's make a ritualistic hand washing thing. Maybe it's a Moroccan thing and was beautiful tile and the petals or whatever we don't know yet. We're still trying to figure all that out for different projects.
Having said that I heard a report that people are starting to use their car as this kind of like safety bubble. Like I'm in my car, no one can get at me and I can order food from drive through and I can like do work in my car and I'm safe in my car. And it makes me wonder if cruise ships got to turn the perception on its ear, that once you're on the cruise ship, everybody on that cruise ship is safe. Like this is our Island, this is our raft.
Everyone's been through some sort of a screen, and now you're coming to the cruise ship to be safe, not to be exposed to danger and somehow that I don't know how that shift happens, and how the programming, or how the onboarding or any, or other processes work. But there's a hurdle there that I think everyone needs to recognize about the perception of like well, what does happen if it's lethal next time? What do you do?
I mean, do they use the life rafts? And like start quarantine? Do we have to now build a whole quarantine section of ship? Is that really feel like a place to relax with your family? So I think it's going to be solved and I think we're in it right now. One of the things about living in New York is we've been through 9/11. There's the New York experience of 9/11, and then American experience of 9/11. It seems that right now there's a New York experience of this COVID experience, and then the American experience.
And they're different because the complexity of the cities are different. And if you look at New York, right after 9/11, everyone was like well, that's it for highrises in New York, no one's ever renting an office over at the 20th floor. That was like everybody was certain that commercial real estate in New York was over. Well from 2002 to 2020 was the greatest prolific build of office space and towers in the history of New York city. The city has just blown up.
People will quickly move on once they move on. So I think that while we're in the weeds, we're super lost in the side like oh my God, how is anyone ever going to cruise again? But I think once this passes, Greg might be right. There might be pandemics all the time, but there really hasn't been one for 100 years and maybe the next one will come twice as fast, and that'll be 50 years or they'll come in 25 years or maybe they'll just keep flowing through.
So in that regard, I think we really have to understand what's the value proposition of coming on a cruise ship and how do we help propagate that? How do we as a group of thinkers help answer that question. It's a big one, I think about it a lot.
Madelene Hall (00:35:06):
Do you think about it a lot as well, Greg?
Greg Walton (00:35:09):
Yeah, it's interesting because you were saying that how to make the ship sort of the safety bubble, like the people are with their cars. And thinking about part of the reason that people choose their cruise vacation is destination. And so that brings up an interesting question of as ships travel from destination to destination, then you have your guests leave the ship to experience that destination. Then how do you ensure when they come back on board that you're keeping that safety bubble?
And working through those kinds of things, to me it's a whole interesting conversation about the world in general. At the time 100 years ago, when we had the Spanish flu, people did not travel and move about the globe the way they move today. And in the future, people are going to be moving about the globe even on a much vast scale than what we imagine now. So that's the reason I always say that there, we have to think about that this isn't the last time we're going to have this experience because of that ... Or borders are disappearing so to speak.
I think we have to think about that, so when we really started thinking about when the cruise ships start coming back online, especially in the Caribbean, being in the US and thinking about, we have a large US market that comes to Miami and Fort Lauderdale to board a cruise ship in the winter to escape the cold bitter weather of where they live, and go to the Caribbean and have a week of warmth and relaxation.
So are these Caribbean islands going to allow ships to come in? Because if all of a sudden you have a ship the size of some of like an Oasis of the Seas, for example where there are 6,000 guests, and they disembark onto this Island, and there is the potential that they could bring disease to the Island. And that would definitely overtax that small island's healthcare system.
So we've been thinking perhaps when the Caribbean itinerary start coming back in, this is going to be a chance too for the private islands of the different cruise lines to blossom and become even more than what they are now. And there's been a lot of investment by the major cruise lines into their islands recently to improve them and really make them a destination unto themselves.
But what can be done to even enhance that experience more, to make that you're not dependent on going to different stops in the Caribbean, that they could go to private islands and then therefore control that sort of safety bubble as you were calling it Lionel. So that's even a conversation of operational things beyond what's happening within the ship. It's what the ship touches that we have to fold into the conversation.
Lionel Ohayon (00:38:52):
That's a very good point.
Fredrik Johannson (00:38:56):
That is an interesting thing. We think a lot about how just not to spread the infection on board the ship, or get it onboard the ship, but not how to prevent it getting off the ship if it occurs. That is interesting and the safe bubble aspect. I mean, what do you think, will there be some kind of certification that this ship has been through the exercise of redesigning and changing things on board, and they have the protocols and the group training and stuff. Will there be a certificate in the future for a safe ship kind of thing?
Greg Walton (00:39:30):
Yes. Who knows? It's very interesting. I know from like personal experience of traveling to certain locations in the globe, that there are certain vaccines you have to have whether it be yellow, fever, cholera, et cetera, or you can't go there. Or if you've been to a country that has ... Treat yellow fever for example. And I just take this from a personal experience. I was going to South Africa, but my passport had a stamp within the last six months of going to Brazil.
Well, because I've been in Brazil, South Africa required me to have a yellow fever vaccine. So, I have one of those yellow cards that you have all your vaccine records. Is that going to be the way we all have to travel now? If the day comes that there is a COVID-19 vaccine, we're going to have documented evidence that we've had this vaccine in order to travel or go from country to country, and any other type of potential pandemic that comes along.
So I think there is going to be a point that it's going to be sort of almost like with your passport, you have as an individual, some type of documentation to prove that you've been vaccinated against the following diseases. And that's going to change, it's going to be like airline travel. We've all gotten very used to you have to go through security.
In the US we have to take off our shoes and do all this kind of stuff, and it's just become normal. It's become nobody thinks about it anymore. It's just part of the process of traveling. So I think there will be regulated things that will come out of this and may be a vaccine card is going to be one of those things.
Madelene Hall (00:41:38):
So speaking of all these regulations, and safety procedures, and wash your hands signs all over the ship, how confident do you feel that we will be able to still design a guest experience that makes it worth it anyway, that makes people not really notice everything that's going on. That makes it a really pleasurable experience to still cruise. Even though we might have to have social distancing, temperature checks, special passports and everything else, what do you think? Fredrik?
Greg Walton (00:42:10):
I think it's important that we approach it from exactly what you said, guest experience. Not approach it from purely a safety point of view that whatever we do enhances the guest experience. For example, like I'd mentioned about the shower in a state room. That it comes off to the guest as an enhanced or elevated experience from what they had in the past.
And it's almost subliminal that it's actually enhancing their safety. I think that's what you have to approach the design from. Yes, you are trying to make sure that the guests remain safe and well, and the crew remains safe and well on that ship. But to the guest, it's always about an enhanced guest experience that has been improved from the last time they cruised.
Fredrik Johannson (00:43:18):
That's true, and maybe so let's assume that there will be a set of requirements that all the ships will have to fulfill somehow. There's certain things you have to have on board or do onboard. Then I guess it's going to be up to us as designers or I mean in the end the clients, how well they manage that, maintaining the guest experience and also the profitability. That's going to dictate how well they do in the future.
If they can check all these boxes and still have a great guest experience and run a profitable cruise operation, then it's a winner. If not, it's going to lose out in the long run. I think that there's no solution that will fit all. There's no [inaudible 00:44:06] tailor made for all the brands and the different size of ships and everything.
So I guess our job is trying to adopt the existing ships that are out there already to the requirements in the best way we can. And maybe that means a plastic sheet between the guest or something and in worst case or [inaudible 00:44:30]. And then we have obviously the one step we have on our drawing table. And then we have little mountains too [inaudible 00:44:38] and do these things depending on how far they've progressed.
I mean, the real opportunity I guess is for the newcomers, the new players and also the prototypes that are coming in the future. Then we can really rethink a lot of the stuff that we have discussed, the programming and the infrastructure of the ship and back of house and how we make the ship better suited for the future. Maybe safe also, and a better guest experience.
Madelene Hall (00:45:13):
So we spoke a bit earlier about reprogramming the daily life of the passengers, of the cruise guests. We were talking a bit about technology and other aspects, if you could without any limitations, change something on the ships today to match of course the COVID-19 situation, but also to make it better. What would you change?
Lionel Ohayon (00:45:39):
I'm afraid to answer that question other than [inaudible 00:45:42] but look I think there's an opportunity. This is kind of goes back to our first conversations. Like what can you imagine a cruise ship to be? What can you imagine the cruise ship industry is expanding exponentially right now, and in that kind of expansion, are assumptions about what people are going to want and by basing on data, what people have wanted, what people will want, new demographics, new group of people will even want to be on ships. I mean, I think to me one of the things that I'm seeing in this behavioral change from work at home is that people are like, well, I can work at home.
And therefore maybe I could change my behavior of how I vacation, meaning maybe I can petition, or maybe my office will change the way that people take vacation. Because they'll be like hey you can have a work vacation. So go away for three weeks, go away for a month and you're checking in 25% of the time or, whatever that might look like. It's definitely going to change and that's going to affect how people vacation.
And in order for them to be able to take those types of leaves while they're still connected, they're going to need places where they can stay connected and be away for a longer period of time. So if you imagine that a cruise ship doesn't have the same cycle, because people aren't tied to their vacation slots that they have to get back in school and blah, blah, blah.
What does it look like if you had a longer tenure or a longer vacation time on the ship, what would it look like and how would it affect the kind of things that you offer on that ship and how would you deal with the stuff that people have to do like wellness or people who are doing small surgeries, and things that they want to do that are not in their regular stream of life.
They want to get them done. They want to go somewhere to do it and sort of clump all of that behavior into like this experience on a ship. And maybe the ships becomes super pointed in what they're solving for. Instead of them trying to be a catch all for everyone, this one is a nip and talk and it's nipping and talking work or whatever. And you start to create these profiles that solve for certain things. And other ones are much more about education, all have that kind of exists in parts.
In different ships, I had to take on different personalities, but I wonder if there's an opportunity to really see these things as something completely new. And just one thing on the behavior thing. I'll reference Burning Man and the kind of 10 principles of this festival. The first one being leave, no trace. That's a principle that everybody who's been to this festival has understood and takes on as a moniker for their lives everywhere else they go.
So a ship can be a place where you can instill new behavior for people because they went on the ship and make it a positive. As opposed to, "Oh God I hate going to ships, I got to wash my hands." It's like you learn something about your behavior on that ship, but now when you leave ship for the rest of your life, it becomes part of what you do all the time. And that's a tone and authorship I think that I just think that the way that these cruise lines are and are going to be speaking to people and inviting people to the ship is going to change for sure. I just don't know exactly how.
Madelene Hall (00:49:20):
That's a beautiful idea I have to say. Let's see, we have about 10 minutes left and we do have some questions from the people that are listening. Per?
Per Eriksson (00:49:34):
Yes, let's see. So we were talking about or the question is about the design brief. And do you believe that ship operators willing to touch innovation and improvements for the guest. I guess Lionel already answered that one. Another one is about the opportunity for change that we had right now when nothing is certain, there is an opportunity to change behavior or perhaps even manage behavior. Could we as designers have any part in that, or it's I guess, our visionary work. Could that be part of managing designing new behaviors or?
Lionel Ohayon (00:50:30):
I mean, I think that the question is for each person to decide how far they want to reach into their creative selves and affect that change. More than ever, you don't need to the structure of publishing if you will. Like, if you have a big idea and you think you want to change behavior, put it out there and people will react to it, and if it's interesting and it's compelling, it can get picked up and people can follow a leader on it. And I think people could be encouraged to put their ideas forward.
If you're working in studio, put your idea up, then personally the studio can listen. And if you're just putting it up on a medium publication, or you're throwing up on social media, or you find a Reddit channel, whatever it is, get your ideas out there. It's osmosis today, like ideas move up and down and horizontally and people pick up on them. So you can affect change. You just have to get it out there.
Per Eriksson (00:51:33):
That's very interesting and promising for the design world I would say that are two ways of influencing vision [inaudible 00:51:43] and certification [inaudible 00:51:44]. Let's see, we have a lot of questions now. [inaudible 00:51:52] be a forum for ideas regarding COVID through user experience. Where can we share those information? I don't know who to ask.
Lionel Ohayon (00:52:05):
There's ... The Well organization has a COVID-19 task force, which I took part in. And there you can go on Well and participate and add ideas and ask questions. And there's seminars or webinars going on. I think there's a fair amount of health organizations looking for leaders in different industries, looking for thinkers to help solve the stuff. I think every country in some fashion has something going on. So keep your eye out for it. We could start at Well.
Per Eriksson (00:52:37):
Thank you. Carnival has announced stay that the accelerated disposal of six ships from the fleet over the next 90 days. I'm interested to know the speed at which the design community can manage the delivery of rebranding projects that can bring in short term profit. Wow.
Madelene Hall (00:53:06):
Interesting. Did get the question Fredrik?
Fredrik Johannson (00:53:10):
I do. I guess I do. It's about how from start to finish, how long it would take to take a ship from Carnival and make all the priorities and put up the budgets and get the design approved and then build it and relaunch it. The speed of that I think is if we just do a monkey shine as we called it, we can probably do it in like six to eight months or something, but then it's really superficial and I'm not sure we can solve some of the pandemic protection measures that we need to think about.
So I guess a year is probably more realistic considering everything else that's happening in industry and the yards being pretty fully booked, and what have you. So I don't know, what do the rest of you think? Greg and Lionel?
Greg Walton (00:54:06):
I mean, we've done some crazy things in refurbishment and in record period of time. I mean, I'm just thinking of ... I mean, Fredrik your team was involved in this as well as us, as well as SMC Norwegian Joy, converting it to come back from China back to the West. I mean, talk about pulling a rabbit out of your hat. That project was for the owner, for MJM, for all of us as architects, it was extremely fast paced.
And I guess for me, that's probably one of the things that I can sort of think about, because that probably is close of an experience, re branding or repositioning an existing ship that could happen now that we've all been a part of. And because it was going from one set of guests, cultural preferences back into a different set of guests cultural preferences.
And there were vendors that were on the ship before that are no longer on the ship and venues that had to be added. And because of that, there was extensive galley and back of house area rework as well. And it was done in record time. So I personally am up for the challenge because I thrive on that kind of craziness. To me it's exciting and when you do make it happen, you're like boy I never thought this would come to fruition and you did it.
So I don't know. I mean, I think as long ... When you've got the right team in place and that project was a perfect example, it was you had three design firms that all had extensive experience in cruise ship work. Both in new build and refurbishment. And you had a contractor that specializes totally in refurbishment work that all the design firms have had extensive relationship with over the years. And then we had an owner and their team that was prepared and knew how to manage the challenge. So when you have the right team in place, you can pull those rabbits out of your hat.
Fredrik Johannson (00:56:36):
That's very true. I guess it depends on to what degree you go into redesigning and re reprogramming and as you said [inaudible 00:56:43] is one part of the globe to the other. With new preferences for everything, dining and behavior on board and that's a big operation. And it can be done extremely quickly, but then it kinds of comes at quite a price tag as well. It was a pretty expensive refurbishment [inaudible 00:57:01]. So I guess it's depending on how much money you want to spend at the end.
Madelene Hall (00:57:09):
It's amazing to see the passion in both of your eyes when you were talking about that project.
Greg Walton (00:57:16):
Because I'm there Fredrik's like me, he thrives on this kind of stuff. It's a challenge. We're like, okay, we're there. We're ready to go for it.
Fredrik Johannson (00:57:26):
We call ourself destructive lifestyle.
Madelene Hall (00:57:33):
Speaking of challenges, let's see if we have one last question maybe, Per.
Per Eriksson (00:57:38):
Yes. So when it comes to change of behaviors, we are now in a moment where behaviors might be easier to change than normally. We know that we have the software technology to do one more thing. Whereas the cruise ships are rather functional design where you have dedicated surfaces for dedicated functions. Do you see that we could create the same openness in the hardware of the cruise ship so that it will match, so that we can actually match behavior change? Or we still have to fit the guests into the hardware that we have?
Lionel Ohayon (00:58:31):
That question might take another hour to answer but-
Madelene Hall (00:58:37):
You have one minute, Lionel.
Per Eriksson (00:58:41):
Yes or no?
Madelene Hall (00:58:42):
Executive summary.
Lionel Ohayon (00:58:43):
The answer is yes, you could, but there's a law ... Cruise ships are like the metaphor of turning a ship around. It doesn't happen right away. It takes a long time. So someone's going to break something new, really, really new. This is probably a good opportunity to instigate that, you're hearing Carnival making changes, people are going to change. They're going to have to react in how far do you go?
We ask our clients, what's your threshold for pain? Do you want change or do you want change? You know what I mean? So right now would be a time for someone to say, you know what, with all the ships we're building, we're going to have to take a stab at one of them really taking a different direction and see what that's all about.
So it can happen. It just requires the will of a big group of people coming at it from different angles, from a financial component, from an experience component, from so many ... From an engineering component, like how is it all going to come together? And what does it mean? So we'll get there.
Madelene Hall (00:59:47):
Sounds very promising and good way to end this webinar today. We are out of time. So I would really like to thank everyone for your participation here today. Especially of course to our brilliant panelists and visionaries, the webinar has been recorded. The link will be published quite soon on all the normal medias. With that, Per and I would like to say a big thank you, and take care and see you again soon.
Fredrik Johannson (01:00:23):
Thank you.
Lionel Ohayon (01:00:23):
Thank you.