Carnival Corporation's Ocean® Guest Experience Platform Recognized with Gold New York Design Award

World's largest leisure travel company chosen by global DRIVENxDESIGN organization for top honor in the digital internet of things (IoT) awards category for "making the ordinary extraordinary"

Ocean® guest experience platform - now featured on the Caribbean Princess from company's Princess Cruises brand - elevates the vacation experience on a large scale with enhanced personalization, on-demand services, keyless stateroom access, friction-free embarkation, hassle-free payment and more

News provided by

Carnival Corporation & plc

Dec 05, 2018, 08:30 ET

MIAMI, Dec. 5, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE: CUK), the world's largest leisure travel company, today announced it has been recognized with a 2018 Gold New York Design Award for Digital IoT for its breakthrough Ocean^® guest experience platform that is wowing cruise guests with MedallionClass vacations.

The New York Design Awards, hosted by the global DRIVENxDESIGN organization, recognized the Ocean guest experience platform for creating "a seamless experience and making the ordinary extraordinary." Members for the awards selection panel are recognized experts in the design economy sourced from leading studios, industry bodies and design professionals.

The first innovation of its kind in the vacation industry, Carnival Corporation's Experience Internet of Things^™ (xIoT^™) platform features leading-edge technology that enables highly personalized service, enhances guest-crew interactions, facilitates interactive entertainment and removes friction points.

"We are thrilled to have our Ocean guest experience platform recognized by the prestigious group of experts assembled by the New York Design awards, and in particular because of its ability to connect people, places and cultures with an exceptionally designed IoT," said John Padgett, chief experience and innovation officer for Carnival Corporation. "It's quite an honor for Carnival Corporation to be recognized among leaders like Samsung, Google and Microsoft for leveraging innovation to reshape experience delivery. It also speaks to our efforts to lead the vacation industry in developing innovative solutions for personalizing the guest experience on a large scale, which is an exciting enhancement for our guests looking to make the most of their vacations."

As the world's first xIoT system, the Ocean guest experience platform connects a wearable device – OceanMedallion^™ – to a network of sensors and readers across cruise ships. This guest-centric approach helps maximize the vacation experience by aligning the products, services and experiences that are most relevant with each guest's preferences based on their location while enabling experience delivery to be personal and frictionless.

"The Ocean guest experience platform is the most sophisticated IoT system on the planet for people," said Vince Ball, vice president of product innovation for Nytec, a Seattle-based technology engineering firm that helped develop the xIoT hardware devices. "The real beauty of this technology is how it blends quietly into the background, while seamlessly and effortlessly connecting guests and crew."

The company's xIoT platform currently is transforming vacations for guests sailing on Caribbean Princess from Princess Cruises, one of Carnival Corporation's nine world-leading cruise line brands. Princess MedallionClass vacations offer guests OceanMedallion-enabled experiences to deliver the most personalized, simplified and engaging Princess cruise vacation:

Keyless Stateroom Entry: Access to stateroom becomes a seamless experience where each guest is securely validated and the door automatically unlocks, with personalized greetings and loyalty level recognition on the welcome portal.
OceanNow™: Using smart devices, guests have the ability to place a drink order and have it delivered directly to them in locations throughout the ship and even to their stateroom.
MedallionPay™: An easy-to-use payment experience, enabling crew members to focus on guest interactions.
OceanCasino™: On smart devices and select portals, guests can wager real money on games, including slots, poker, bingo, roulette, keno and lottery from anywhere on board.
OceanCompass™: Leverages the Ocean Medallion to enable point-to-point wayfinding throughout the ship. Ocean Compass guides guests throughout their journey, providing directional information so they can seamlessly navigate to their next point of interest.
OceanView™: Guests can stream more than 100 hours of award-winning Ocean Original travel content to their smart device anywhere on the ship at no cost. Ocean Original programs air nationally on weekends on ABC and NBC, and are available on Roku, Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
PlayOcean^™: On portals located shipwide, guests are able to play family games, including trivia, word jumble, a matching game and Ocean Treks Adventure, an interactive, shipwide digital scavenger hunt. PlayOcean also transforms guests' mobile devices into game controllers for interactive gaming on the massive Movies Under the Stars screen.

About Carnival Corporation & plc
Carnival Corporation & plc is the world's largest leisure travel company and among the most profitable and financially strong in the cruise and vacation industries, with a portfolio of nine of the world's leading cruise lines. With operations in North America, Australia, Europe and Asia, its portfolio features Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Seabourn, P&O Cruises (Australia), Costa Cruises, AIDA Cruises, P&O Cruises (UK) and Cunard.

Together, the corporation's cruise lines operate 104 ships with 237,000 lower berths visiting over 700 ports around the world, with 21 new ships scheduled to be delivered through 2025. Carnival Corporation & plc also operates Holland America Princess Alaska Tours, the leading tour company in Alaska and the Canadian Yukon. Traded on both the New York and London Stock Exchanges, Carnival Corporation & plc is the only group in the world to be included in both the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100 indices.

In 2017, Fast Company recognized Carnival Corporation as being among the "Top 10 Most Innovative Companies" in both the design and travel categories. Fast Company specifically recognized Carnival Corporation for its work in developing Ocean Medallion™, a high-tech wearable device that enables the world's first interactive guest experience platform capable of transforming vacation travel into a highly personalized and elevated level of customized service.

Additional information can be found on www.carnival.com, www.hollandamerica.com, www.princess.com, www.seabourn.com, www.aida.de, www.costacruise.com, www.cunard.com, www.pocruises.com.au, and www.pocruises.com.

About Nytec, Inc.
Nytec is an award-winning, integrated consulting firm with over 40 years of proven success turning ideas into real, first-of-a-kind, lifestyle technology products for tier-one global and Fortune 500 companies. Focused on hospitality, IoT, oil and gas, smart cities and wearable technologies, Nytec's world-class designers, engineers, and manufacturing experts specialize in translating complex problems, anchored around delivering the ultimate user experience into compelling, simple solutions that span hardware, software and services. http://www.Nytec.com +1.425.968.5715.

SOURCE Carnival Corporation & plc