A case study of Carnival Cruise Lines, published in the August 2006 issue of Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, traces the development of the Carnival brand and how management took advantage of its theme of “Fun Ships” to earn mass-market appeal and industry-leading profits.

Faced with competitors, however, Carnival has developed a new concept of “fun” through quality enhancements and a more sophisticated product bundle and marketing message.

The analysis of Carnival’s brand strategy was written by Robert Kwortnik, an assistant professor at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration.

This is the first case study to be selected as a Cornell Quarterly Featured Article on the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research web site, and it is available for download at no charge at www.chr.cornell.edu.

With the assistance of Carnival’s executive team, Kwortnik analyzed the cruise line’s competitive position, value proposition, and marketing strategy—with a focus on the brand’s evolution.

“Carnival’s emergence as a dominant brand in the seascape has been guided by managements’ focus on the concepts of value and fun,” Kwortnik explains. “The challenge that I found is for Carnival to refine its “Fun Ships” brand to differentiate from competitors who have developed their own versions of fun at sea. At the same time Carnival needs to protect the equity contained in its brand.”

The Carnival Cruise Lines case illustrates the difficulties hospitality managers face when nurturing a brand as it matures. The key, Kwortnik concludes, is for companies like Carnival to stay focused on core customers and the meanings and experiences they seek from a brand.

Focusing on this “brand essence” can help managers make decisions about marketing strategy—from product design elements to marketing communications.

The article, which is now posted at http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/publications/hraq/feature/, was published in the August 2006 issue of the (CQ ), the premier journal of applied research serving hospitality practitioners and scholars.

The award-winning CQ is published by The Center for Hospitality Research at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. Subscriptions are available from Sage Publishing (sagepublications.com).