Manager, New Product Research

Journey with us! Combine your career goals and sense of adventure by joining our incredible team of employees at Royal Caribbean Group. We are proud to offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, and excellent career development opportunities, each offering unique ways to explore the world.

We are proud to be the vacation-industry leader with global brands — including Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises — the most innovative fleet and private destinations, and the best people. Together, we are dedicated to turning the vacation of a lifetime into a lifetime of vacations for our guests.

Royal Caribbean Group’s Guest Experience Research Team has an exciting career opportunity for a full time Manager, New Product Research reporting to the Director, Guest Experience Research Product Development

Position Summary:

The Manager, Product Research proactively strategizes, plans, coordinates and drives research, testing, and auditing projects to ensure that our vacation products and experiences are always living up to our initial product vision while exceeding guest expectations. Working closely with product teams and operational partners, they will develop research plans to deliver strategic guest insights that inform new products and experiences. This individual must be able to mine, analyze, and story tell with data, juggle multiple tasks at the same time, as well as be a detail-oriented project manager. This role also develops and maintains a strategic calendar of auditing for Traveling Product Owners. To be successful, the Research Manager must be able to thrive in a fast-paced and dynamic environment and work collaboratively with Product Development teams as well as other teams throughout the company including Product Innovation, Consumer Insights, Operations, Newbuild, Marketing, Digital and Revenue Management.

This is a new full-time position, so candidate will have the opportunity to define their role and help build this new function for the Product Development department. May require up to 30% of travel.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

At a high-level, responsibilities for this role will include:

• Works across the Product Development team to define testing and auditing priorities and maintain the research calendar.  
• Applies a structured, hypothesis-driven approach to develop custom research designs and analyses results to deliver impactful guest insights.
• Integrates research insights across studies and with broader guest research/consumer understanding.
• Incorporates inputs from secondary and custom research sources to deliver insights for specific business questions.
• Manages the overall analysis framework development to ensure actionable insight delivery.
• Responsible for relationship with research vendor, project management, and ongoing execution of research.
• Collaborates with the Consumer Insights team to support the Product Development team with the design and end-to-end execution of custom quantitative and qualitative studies including the creation of high-quality deliverables.
• Manage the travel schedule and priorities for all traveling managers supporting the launch of new concepts and continuous improvement efforts for newbuilds, revites and private islands.
• Develop and nurture partnerships with onboard executives to establish sustainable processes in order to set up travel managers and concepts for success.
• Own communication and project management deliverables and tracking.
• Oversee concept reporting with a focus on bridging gaps between shoreside and shipboard reporting.
• Work with Strategy & Analytics team to track against targets and support improvement.
• Collaborate with shoreside operational leaders to develop accountability efforts for onboard teams.

New Concepts

• Liase with Product Development product owners to develop plans for iterative testing pre-launch and ongoing monitoring post-launch.
• Provide leadership for Traveling Product Owners as they evaluate new products and experiences against the performance requirements.
• Assist travel product owners onboard to solve for operational challenges and logistics.
• Ensure Lessons Learned are captured and shared with corresponding teams, securing that mission control and product owners record them for future projects.

Continuous Improvement

• Collaborate with internal Innovation, Strategy, Consumer Insights, Operational Partners, and Onboard Revenue teams to perform deep dive assessments.

• Manage and coordinate audits calendar for Product Development supported concepts to ensure steps of service and ideal guest experience is being delivered, while identifying areas of improvement and developing action plan.
• Develop and lead continuous improvement strategies pertaining to the guest journey, offering, operations, and branding.

Performs other duties as required.  This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the employee occupying this position.  Employees will be required to perform any other job-related duties assigned by their supervisor or management.              

All duties and responsibilities are to be performed in accordance with Royal Caribbean International’s Royal Way Standards, SQM standards, USPH guidelines, environmental, and safety policies.

In accordance with Royal Caribbean International’s philosophy of Royal Way, each employee always conducts oneself in a professional and courteous manner. This consists of physical and verbal interactions with guests or fellow shipboard employees and/or in the presence of guest contact and crew areas.

Qualifications, Knowledge and Skills:

• Bachelor’s degree in communications, marketing, business, or related field from an accredited university or college or the international equivalent
• 3-5 years of direct research experience, including study design, moderating/facilitating, analysis and requisite software/hardware tools
• Experience executing and facilitating research, analyzing results/data and translating into a clear and useful strategic insight to support clients and project teams.
• Highly organized and structured, able to manage multiple responsibilities and deliverables at the same time
• Ability to communicate tactfully with department heads, coworkers, and other shipboard employees to diffuse and/or resolve problems and negotiate resolutions.
• Must have experience with Project Management.
• Ability to manage the international staff in a positive and productive manner by motivating, developing, and managing employees as they work. 
• Ability to work positively and cooperatively in a diverse team environment to meet overall established timeframes.
• May require up to 30% of travel.

Knowledge and Skills

• Expertise in study design, methodology, session moderation, data analysis, and reporting for generative and evaluative research.
• Command of a broad set of qualitative and quantitative methods for delivering guest insights and benchmarking the user experience.
• Intermediate to advanced working knowledge of Microsoft Office (365) suite of applications and/or Google equivalents
• Intermediate to advanced working knowledge of survey platforms (e.g. Qualtrics, Decipher, Confirmit, etc.)
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, communicate in a multicultural environment with all levels of employees and management.
• Detail oriented with analytical, financial and spreadsheet skills. 
• Ability to multi-task in a fast-paced environment.
• Some travel may be required for additional support.
• Cruise industry experience a plus.

Internal Candidate Requirements:

In addition to the stated hiring requirements, internal candidates are required to fulfill the following:

• Established a resume and positive personal brand within the company.
• Proven to be able to work well with other departments and establish partnerships with sponsors.
• Must have basic knowledge of working with onboard teams.
• Knowledge of the workings, policies, and procedures of the general Shipboard environment.

We know there's a lot to consider. As you go through the application process, our recruiters will be glad to provide guidance, and more relevant details to answer any additional questions. Thank you again for your interest in Royal Caribbean Group. We'll hope to see you onboard soon!

It is the policy of the Company to ensure equal employment and promotion opportunity to qualified candidates without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, sexuality, gender identity or expression, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Royal Caribbean Group and each of its subsidiaries prohibit and will not tolerate discrimination or harassment.

#LI-EZ1