Virgin Voyages
Few people get the opportunity to work with a major brand on a mission to change a global industry like I was lucky enough to do with Virgin Voyages. That’s why I want to start this story by saying thank you to Jaclyn Marinese, Nathan Rosenberg, Tom McAlpin, Nirmal Saverimuttu, Catherine Schenquerman, Amy Hiles-Maynard, Jay V del Rosario, and Tarek Halabi for believing in me and giving me an opportunity that would change my life.
There were many (many) more great people who also believed in me and helped me along the way. You know who you are, and you will always have a special place in my heart 🫶🏽
I started at Virgin Voyages as a Copywriter in 2018. At that time, there were only a couple hundred employees across our offices in South Florida and the shipyard in Genoa, Italy, where our first lady ship, Scarlet Lady, had just begun construction.
My time at Virgin ended as the Social Engagement Manager in 2022 with thousands of employees worldwide, three completed lady ships sailing across the Caribbean and Mediterranean, and one more on the way.
Working in the hospitality industry is an adventure in and of itself, but working in cruising takes that adventure to the next level. I look back at everything I helped build as a story in several parts 🚢 🧜♀️⛱
*Unless otherwise noted, I worked on every piece of content shared in this story**The posts included here are screenshots with links attached. Click on the image to be taken to the post itself.
PART ONE:
an epic sea change for all
Virgin Voyages is fueled by the entrepreneurial spirit of Richard Branson. Its goal in sea travel was to create AN EPIC SEA CHANGE FOR ALL. The brand set out on a mission to revamp everything the world knew about cruising. It’s a cruise for people who don't like cruising. A cruise for people who had never even thought of going on a holiday at sea.
Some of Virgin's changes to the cruise experience are very obvious, and others are more subtle. It started with the language that had been decided before I arrived.
Instead of cruises, we have sailings or voyages.
Instead of cruisers or passengers, we have Sailors.
From there, the brand meticulously shaped every detail of the Sailor experience, from first contact through our digital touchpoints to mapping out the boarding process, every square inch of the cabins, the bathrooms, and all the spaces throughout the ship.
NAMING SPACES & PRODUCTS
I'm proud to say I named four different spaces and one key product that are now a permanent part of each of the four lady ships in service:
Gunbae (Korean BBQ)
Diner & Dash (American-style diner)
The Scene (event space)
Get Lost (sales lounge)
The Band (wearable / keycard)
GUNBAE 🍶
Gunbae is the first Korean BBQ of its kind at sea. Designed as a social dining experience, every meal begins with a free shot of soju while the server leads the table through a Korean drinking game.
In my research, I found that the word Gunbae 건배 (geonbae) means "empty glass" in Korean, like the expressions "bottoms up" or "cheers." We incorporated the eatery’s name into the drinking game, having the entire table scream GUNBAE when someone took a shot.
DINER & DASH 🍳
Dining on board Virgin Voyages is All Inclusive, but not like on other cruise lines. Sailors can dine at 20+ eateries on every lady ship without paying anything out of pocket. Yes, that includes the filet mignon at The Wake 🥩
Instead of a buffet, lady ships have The Galley, a food hall with enough options to satisfy any Sailor's taste buds.
One of the standout spots at The Galley is Diner & Dash, an American-style diner open 24/7 for any Sailor craving a late-night meal.
Because the food is included in your voyage fare, Sailors never have to worry about staying to pay their bills or leaving a tip.
They can dine and 🏃♀️💨
GET LOST 🧭
When you're having fun on your holiday, what's one of the first things you think of? Planning your next trip! Get Lost, located on Deck 7 of every lady ship, is a sales area where Crew members help Sailors book their next voyage.
THE SCENE 🐋
A private event space on Deck 15, The Scene has sweeping ocean views and furniture that can be re-arranged to meet your event needs.
Bonus Fact: I spent many days speaking with Head Designer Dee Cooper about her inspiration for individual spaces. The walls and ceiling of this space were inspired by the texture of the inside of a (very famous) whale's mouth. Next time you're on board, make your way here and see if you can spot what she's talking about. But keep it on the DL; it's considered bad luck to talk about Moby Dick on board a cruise ship 🤫
ARE YOU WITH THE BAND? 🎫
Virgin Voyages prides itself on providing Rockstar Service. Rockstar Service is the ethos around making anyone on board feel like a RockStar. Because being a rockstar is all about access, the most important thing a Sailor can have while on board is their Sailor Wearable. This wristband opens the door to their Cabin or Suite and stores all of their passenger information and payment methods.
Next time you're trying to make it backstage to the VIP area and they ask you for some credentials, hold your wrist up and tell them, "I'm with The Band."
You may have noticed I spelled "rockstar" three different ways in the previous paragraph. That wasn't a typo. It's the unique Virgin Voyages Brand Voice we created to identify different aspects of our Sailor & Crew experience.
A rockstar is a public figure who lives life on their terms. Think Prince, Madonna, or Sir Richard Branson himself.
Wherever they go, rockstars expect the best service, but on board a lady ship, everyone receives Rockstar Service, the type of hospitality you can only find when traveling with Virgin Voyages.
When you set sail, you can either be a Sailor staying in a cabin or a RockStar Sailor who booked a RockStar Quarters suite with extra perks 🎸
After fine-tuning the details of our Rockstar Service guide and working on the training handbooks for incoming Crew members, we needed to find people to fill the roles. Our People & Culture Crew were traveling across the globe to find Crew members, and they needed a way to get people in different cities excited. I thought to myself, “What’s more exciting than when your favorite artist drops the schedule for their highly anticipated tour?” And the Rockstar Recruitment Tour was born 🤘
I arrived at Virgin Voyages in July 2018 and got straight to work on everything you’ve seen above. I had only been there a few months, but it felt like we had been working on this for years (which many people before me had).
Ship was coming together quickly 🧱
We had ideas, plans, designs, and everything you could think of, but it only existed on paper. The only assets we had to work with were digital renders and a few giant slabs of metal in Genoa, Italy: the first Lego pieces of our future lady ship, Scarlet Lady 🚢 🧜♀️
PART TWO:
MAKING SHIP HAPPEN
We named the places, had the programming for individual spaces, and finedtuned an entire brand voice with guidelines around language, emojis, and even the punctuation we used (It was a highly debated topic in the office, but we decided NOT to use the Oxford comma. Please respect my privacy now as I'm still mourning my beloved comma that is absent from everything I worked on.).
Now it was time to let the world know that ship was coming together and get them excited to set sail on the first Virgin Voyages cruise ever (in just under two years).
AHOY! BLOG 📰
In my first few months at Virgin Voyages, I was part of the Content Studio in the Marketing Department. This team covered everything from emails to out-of-home ads, content writing, social media, website content, and any other necessary creative task. During this time, I wrote five blog articles that served as announcements for major brand programming.
🤤 Epic Eats All Under One Roof
😵💫 Razzle Dazzle Restaurant: A Virgin Voyages culinary experience
🚧 Virgin Voyages Unveils Plans for Terminal at PortMiami
🤿 Richard Branson and Virgin Voyages Venture into the Deep Blue
SOCIAL MEDIA CREW 📲
Historically, sea travel has always been slow. A journey that leaves you at the mercy of the winds and the tides, moving according to what Mother Nature allows.
My time at Virgin Voyages was the opposite of that 🌪
Several months after I began, we had doubled the amount of people working in the Marketing Department. As our content needs grew, so did the number of teams we had.
I embarked on the next part of my journey when I shifted from my role in the Content Studio to being a founding member of the Social Media Crew. For the first few months in 2019, it was just me and one other person (shoutout to our incredible Social Media Manager and my friend, Hayden Rockwell).
Now, it was on us to promote all the amazing programming and experiences that had been in the works for years to our followers on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
But we still didn't have a completed ship to work with!
Instead, we leveraged 3D renders and animations to take followers on a virtual tour of spaces under construction while telling them exactly what to expect.
GUNBAE 🥢
THE ATHLETIC CLUB 🥊
MODERN ROMANCE OF SAILING ⛵️
One of the key ideas that inspired the creation of Virgin Voyages and continues to be a pillar of the brand today is the Modern Romance of Sailing.
This vision of what a holiday on a Virgin Voyages lady ship could make someone feel called back to the old days of luxury sea travel—the days of grand ocean liners with opulent spaces and lavish suites decked out in all their finery. A place where orchestras serenaded guests as their notes mingled with the clinking of champagne glasses, rising into the starry night—and anything seemed possible.
But how could we let our followers know that these grand visions inspired every detail of the physical ship they were sailing on?
When it comes to the cruise industry, everything begins and ends with the ships. That might feel obvious, but if you're not a big cruiser, you don't understand how excited people get for even a glimpse of a new ship under construction. We could spend countless hours planning and prepping an exciting announcement with multiple rounds of meetings, shoots, edits, and all types of changes before final approval, only for the post to get what felt like a lukewarm response 😔
The next day, we'd post a single picture of the ship taken on a flip phone from 2004, and it would get more likes than every post we'd ever shared before that 🤯
But that's the way things go with social media.
You can't get upset at how your audience reacts; you must learn to adapt and adjust to what they want. Plus, you'd get excited too if you'd spent years waiting a new cruise ship and you went from seeing posts like this:
To posts like this:
But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves; a lot of ship happened between the PortMiami Terminal V renders and the picture of Scarlet Lady on her sea trials in the Mediterranean. Also, if for any reason you’re wondering about the drone used to take the picture above, it decided to stay on holiday in the Med. Forever. At the bottom of the ocean 🪸
Before we had an actual ship to take pictures of, we still wanted to give our followers a peek behind the scenes by highlighting the brilliance of our head designers, Dee Cooper & Jamie Douglas, and their process of bringing a 110,000-ton ship to life.
For this post, I interviewed Dee Cooper and worked with our social designer (member #3 of the Social Media Crew), Jorge Rocha, to craft a video that provided a glimpse into the inspiration behind their shipbuilding process.
People loved hearing about the shipbuilding, but they still wanted more. Once our first lady ship was completed and hit the water, we gave them just that.
After one of the most exciting years of my life, we were drawing closer and closer to the highly-anticipated launch of our first lady ship. It was really going to happen! Scarlet Lady's maiden voyage out of PortMiami was scheduled for April 1, 2020 🚢🌊
Everything was ready for us to set sail 🍾
In February 2020, our CEO, Tom McAlpin, received the keys to the ship in Genoa. Our leading lady and her Crew were on their way to the UK for a few showcase stops before hopping the pond over to New York for an epic party to introduce her to our stateside Sailors.
2020 was going to be one of the most memorable years in the history of Virgin Voyages, the Virgin brand, and the cruise industry. Only a catastrophe of global proportions could stop us now…
Before we get to that, here are a few more beautiful shots of our majestic Scarlet Lady 😍
PART THREE:
DELAYED DEPARTURE
Do you have any idea what it feels like to have been working on something for years and years with billions of dollars invested and thousands of people relying on this venture for their livelihood, only for the world to come to a grinding halt a month before your business was about to launch to the public?
That’s what happened to the entire Crew of Virgin Voyages, who had come together from all over the world and from different walks of life to make the vision of An Epic Sea Change For All a reality. It didn’t matter if you had been on the project since 2011, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019, or even just a few months. We were a tight-knit team who collectively bought into the dream we were working so hard on. Everyone knew their role and played their part, big or small.
Then, one day, on board Scarlet Lady in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, swaying side-to-side from 35-foot waves and thousands of miles from any other humans or land, everything changed. If you want to know more about the exact moment the tide started to turn, shoot me an email through the Contact form, and let’s get some coffee. But this story is meant to highlight my work, so we’ll stick to that 🤓
After 23 days on board Scarlet Lady, sailing to different ports in the UK and crossing the Atlantic to South Florida instead of our original destination of New York, we arrived at PortMiami late in Feb 2020. I woke up that morning after a long night to an email letting all of the Plantation office Crew on board the ship know they needed to go directly to our offices for a full day of work. No one was sure what was happening yet, but we knew something was on the horizon 👀
Several days later, early in March, we sailed on Scarlet Lady to Bimini, Bahamas, for a few extra days of content capture. We still weren’t sure what the future held, but we’d know soon enough.
I didn’t work on the statement included below (shoutout to another incredible copywriter and friend who is still shaping the way Virgin Voyages speaks to the world, Bailey Edwards), but I feel it’s important to have it here because this was the first post that completely shifted the lives of every Crew member.
Everyone knows how it went after that. We all “went to work from home for a few days,” and things were never the same 😷
In the beginning, we were all hopeful things would go back to normal relatively quickly. But as work-from-home dragged on and the lockdown began, we had to pivot our posting strategy.
We no longer had a ship full of Crew & Sailors to work with. Instead, we were left with the content we had already captured while on board and searching for new ways to continue promoting a holiday at sea that had never actually happened.
On top of scrambling to create engaging content that would satisfy Sailors stuck at home, we also had to deal with being stuck at home ourselves, thousands of cancellations, itinerary changes, and people wondering what was going to happen with the hard-earned money they had put towards the ultimate holiday at sea.
happenings at home 🤹
Traditionally, cruises have a very important role that belongs to a single person, the Cruise Director. The Cruise Director is the face of the ship for all of the passengers. They’re in charge of leading the social events that bring passengers together for holiday fun. Whether it’s making cheeky announcements about when the next dancing showdown is happening at the pool or being the MC when the dancing is going down, they’re always front and center.
At Virgin Voyages, there is no Cruise Director 🙅
Instead, there’s a Happenings Cast with 7-10 different Crew members at any time who have specific roles they play on board the ship. If you want to focus on your well-being during your holiday and break a sweat, talk to The Balancer. If you love board games and want to spend your time at The Arcade, The Gamer will be your best friend. There’s also The Charmer, a magician who will leave you speechless with their tricks. The Artist who is always painting something new and beautiful and who can teach you a few things, too. Joining them are The Spark, The Diva, The Glow, The Flare, The Foodie, The Bounce, The Hype, and last, but certainly not least, The Hostess ✨
Each of these Crew members has a role on board the ship highlighted by their specific talent. If you want to learn more about each of them, set sail and find out 😉
Sitting at home or on board the ship waiting to go home, our Happenings Cast was bursting with energy after training for months to showcase their talents. We decided to work with them and create some #HappeningsAtHome that would entertain our Sailors sitting on their couches wishing they were out in the open sea.
On board our lady ships, Scarlet Night is the biggest celebration you’ll have. On this night, the entire ship is decked out in special decorations. Sailors are encouraged to dress with a splash of red, and our performers can be found throughout the ship, popping up in several different activations to tell the tale of Scarlet Night. It all ends with a big performance and party at the main pool, Aquatic Club.
While we still couldn’t celebrate Scarlet Night on board, we gave everyone at home a chance to get in on the fun without ever stepping outside.
And Sailors were eager to join the fun 🥃
To continue our content focus on staying at home we even had a few options to help people liven up their workdays 🖼
While no picture or video will ever compare to the real thing, we still found ways to give Sailors a taste of the incredible destinations our lady ships would sail to with a #VirtualVoyage.
Destinations weren’t the only thing we wanted our followers to experience from home. With a completed lady ship, there were also countless spaces to explore.
Since Sailors couldn’t do the real thing, we provided them glimpses of what to expect at the different bars and eateries on board.
As always, plenty of ship shots and gorgeous top deck views were a welcomed sight for our loyal Sailors.
While we were finding our groove and exercising our creative muscles, working on regular content without ever leaving our homes, things in the outside world were only getting worse.
Little did I know I was about to graduate from my Masters to my PhD in crisis management.
PART FOUR:
ALL HANDS ON DECK
After a second round of cancellations, it was clear things would not go back to normal as quickly as we’d hoped. During the previous few months, we had been focused on continuing to post regular content to keep our audiences engaged. That quickly shifted to servicing the thousands of Sailors whose bookings had been impacted.
This brings me to one of the most important pieces of social media advice I could ever give:
treat all social media community management as customer service
Traditionally, customer service happens either in person, via phone calls, or through email. But now that customers have a direct line of contact with brands, where do you think they go?
It’s much easier to write an angry comment on a post that will get dozens of likes and people supporting your plight than to wait on hold for hours on end, only to not get the answer you’re looking for.
Due to the incredible volume of calls and emails from impacted Sailors looking to get their deposit money back, many of whom needed the money because they were out of jobs, this sentiment spilled over into our comments and DMs.
I’d like to take a quick pause from this story to give a shoutout to the Sailor Services Crew at Virgin Voyages and the customer service department of every major brand and business throughout the world. I know we’ve all had our not-so-rewarding experiences with customer service departments when we don’t get the answer we need or when it feels like there isn’t even any real help available, but the people in these departments are the backbone of every business. Shoutout to everyone and anyone who’s ever worked in customer service at any point in their lives (this includes retail).
At this point, we were down to posting one or two days a week instead of the regular 5-7. While I was still involved in the creative side, helping craft content, much of my attention shifted to being part of the Sailor Services Crew to supplement my community management needs. I participated in the full Sailor Services Training over the course of an entire month so I could become familiar with our policies and systems and help provide our Sailors relief via social channels.
Since I was working two different positions at once, I became the go-to Crew member for any customer service-related inquiries or questions the Marketing Department had about policies they might not be aware of.
As Sailors waited to get their money back or tried to rebook using their newly received credits, it still felt like the world was on fire. In the United States, tensions continued to rise as people filled the streets with cries for justice.
In response to the George Floyd protests, every brand weighed the decision of what to say (if they were to say anything at all). Because it’s in Virgin’s DNA to celebrate the differences that make humans great, to put people over profits, and to do business that makes the world a better place, I felt this was an incredible opportunity to show Sailors exactly where we stood.
I know a single social media post from a for-profit business isn’t going to end racism or solve all of the world’s problems, but we do what we can with what we have. What I had was a global brand with millions of eyeballs on it at any moment and a leadership team that understood what was the right thing to do.
I’m proud to say I was able to get the following post put together and shared through all of our major channels so Sailors knew exactly what we stood for.
Not all of our followers were happy with the stance we took. But I’m happy to say Virgin Voyages doesn’t fold to racists or bigots of any kind.
For the rest of 2020 and the first half of 2021 we continued to have delays, cancellations, complaints, and plenty of things to keep us busy while the brand fought against the current to stay afloat. Throughout all that time, the Social Media Crew continued to kick ass, making ship happen 🫡
Below are a few of the posts from that time that demonstrate how we kept our Sailors informed about everything regarding the brand. From details for the latest cancellations and rebooking policies, Scarlet’s whereabouts, ship construction, and even all the things available throughout every single deck of the ship.
I came up with the visual / animation idea for the post above and wrote the caption, while the illustration was done by Anthony Quintana and the animation by Aron Brand. The creative was originally made for an Empty Cart email in 2019, an automatic email sent to Sailors who added an itinerary to their carts but never finished checking out. It was so successful in getting Sailors to convert from potential buyers to completed bookings that we decided to repurpose it later on.
Being an adults-only ship was a big selling point for us. It allowed us to be creative in ways many other brands don’t have the opportunity to because they have to cater to a large adult demographic and include things for children and families.
We always jumped on an opportunity to remind followers the only kid allowed on our lady ships was their inner child 🕹
WiFi is also included in every voyage fare, so you can post away while at sea to let your followers know what an epic time you’re having. But how could we let people know in a way that felt natural?
UGC (User Generated Content) was (and still is) a major part of Virgin Voyages’ social media strategy. As a hospitality brand, you can design an experience down to the most precise detail and try to explain it to people, but nothing will ever beat a customer showing off their authentic experience and seeing your product/service through their eyes.
Pairing Sailors’ images or videos with branded copy is as close to a sure thing on social media as you’ll ever have 😉
Cruisers love to look over deck plans to plan their trips and compare offerings across different ships. We combined our digital deck plans with actual images of spaces to take followers on a virtual tour of what to expect on each level.
Knowing which eatery is on each deck is always good, but what’s the use of knowing the upscale Mexican spot with a menu crafted by a world-renowned chef is included in your voyage fare if you can’t actually see the menu?
Our Crew took great care in crafting unique menus to provide a world-class eating experience. But is there something on the menu for everyone? The vegans? The vegetarians? The pickiest eaters? The ultimate foodies?
I spoke with our Director of Food & Beverage Operations, Jordan Bernstein, who helped us create a daily #EatingItinerary for each of these different types of Sailors. Below, you’ll see our Meat’s On The Menu itinerary, but click through to the tweet and you can go through the thread of all of the options we created (Seafood Satisfaction, Delicious Decisions, and Vegan’s Delight).
And where in the world will Sailors get the opportunity to enjoy all of this delicious food? Nothing like a good itinerary drop to get the people excited.
If you’re ever struggling with content ideas for a brand, approach the situation like this:
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask, “What questions do I have about the product/service, and what would I like to know?” Then, as we did above, create content that answers those questions.
And never forget, social media is about having fun. People just want to have fun.
Have fun with what you do!
I could share posts for days, but I’ll cut it off here with one final piece of advice based on experience.
When you’re a scrappy startup, sometimes the content is actually yourself! 🤠
PART FIVE:
OH SHIP, WE’RE SETTING SAIL!
all aboard 🚢
After sixteen months and more delay announcements than I can count, Scarlet Lady was finally ready to welcome Sailors on board 🎉
It started with a few weekend trips departing from Portsmouth before crossing the Atlantic for a showcase in NYC. Three days docked in Manhattan full of dining, dancing, partying, and everything you could think to show the world how Virgin Voyages does cruising 😎
Once you finally have actual, real people experiencing your product, the content practically creates itself.
We lived it up in New York 🍎
Then sailed home to Miami to for our official MerMaiden Voyage 🧜♀️
We were finally sailing!
We had a ship full of Sailors going to real destinations with plenty of opportunities to make engaging content. At one point, it felt like it would never happen. But we made it through and were able to make some pretty kick-ass stuff along the way.
PART SIX:
LIFE BACK ON SHORE
Isn’t that a jaw-dropping picture of Marina di Carrara above? It's such an incredible destination in Western Italy. I wouldn’t know anything about it—I’ve never been there—but it’s a great picture!
After years of hard work coupled with exhaustive delays, we finally set sail with Scarlet Lady out of Terminal V in PortMiami and Valiant Lady out of World Trade Center in Barcelona. Our lady ships were cruising the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, giving Sailors an epic experience like never before.
If you’re wondering what came next, this is not the part of the story where things slow down.
Now that we had two lady ships full of Sailors, we also had two lady ships full of things that could potentially go wrong. And when things go wrong, where do people go? Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Cruise Critic, TripAdvisor, or any possible place available to air out grievances and have hundreds of others respond and complain with you.
Our Social Media Crew continued to grow with a new Social Media Manager, more designers, and several more creatives traveling to destinations around the world to create some of the best content in the industry.
My focus on Community Engagement also grew. I now managed a dedicated team of 8 Sailor Services Crew members, the Sailor Engagement Crew, who were tasked with responding to comments and DMs across all of our social channels and review forums to service any Sailor complaints from people at sea and those on land eager to set sail.
We had a Slack channel where these Crew members would send comments or DMs and potential responses for my review and approval before posting. We dealt with everything and anything you could think of, and it was never easy or straightforward. As our engagement needs continued to grow, we worked with several different partners to help manage our community.
The team at Pixlee (now Emplifi) helped us create a Sailor Reviews page where we could showcase public social media posts from all of the Sailors who tagged us or used one of our branded hashtags. This page also includes highlights from Cruise Critic, Trip Advisor, and more review platforms.
The team from ICUC Social worked overnight to cover the hours while our Sailor Services Crew wasn’t online.
The incredible Crew members on board, our lady ships in the Caribbean and Mediterranean, were always available to help us solve any Sailors’ issues that may be happening while at sea and to surprise Sailors with unexpected gifts and perks when we noticed they were posting excellent content about their voyage.
All of these aspects of the Sailor experience fell under my purview, with my right hand at the time, who’s now taken control of the Sailor Engagement Program, Hannah Frank, there with me every step of the way.
Aside from social channels, we also kept a close eye on Cruise Critic reviews, writing lengthy responses to Sailor complaints and passing on the info to our Operations Managers for any potential changes to be made. For me, the most exciting aspect of all this work was the onboard Sailor Engagement Program I was putting together. After meeting with the managers from every department on board both of our lady ships and working with managers on shore, we began to craft a playbook for how we would reward Sailors who were posting positively about us while on board.
The plan was for it to look like this:
Sailor Jeff & his wife Mary are celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary on the Mayan Sol itinerary on board Scarlet Lady. They’ve been having a great time posting on their stories about the views from their sea terrace and shaking their phone for champagne while at the Aquatic Club. We checked their bookings and noticed they have a reservation at Extra Virgin, our Italian eatery, for 7 pm tonight before heading to the 9 pm performance of Duel Reality. After getting these details, I’d reach out to a designated Crew member on board to let them know we’d be surprising them with two gifts:
(1) A hand-selected bottle of champagne to enjoy at dinner with a note congratulating them on their anniversary 🥂
(2) Once they checked in for Duel Reality, a Crew member would escort them to front-row seats adorned with sashes that said RESERVED and were being held just for them.
It was our way of making their voyage experience that much more epic.
That was the plan, but execution and logistics are much more complicated than the simple story I presented above. I was balancing working on the details of the Sailor Engagement Program with making sure we continued to stay active on our social channels while reviewing forums addressing any Sailor needs and finding more opportunities for irl (in-real-life) engagement.
As our business continued to grow, I could feel my time at Virgin Voyages coming to an end. I loved imagining all the possibilities of surprising Sailors with things they never saw coming and making their holiday that much more memorable. At the same time, I realized I yearned for a life beyond cruising and hospitality and an opportunity to take everything I had learned and apply it to a new brand, a new industry, and a new venture.
I departed Virgin Voyages in September 2022 in search of new opportunities and new adventures. I look back at my time as part of the Virgin family very fondly. An incredible experience that I was honored to have, where I learned so much, experienced so much and made connections with hundreds of incredible people from around the world along the way.
I am forever grateful to the Virgin Voyages family for everything they have given me. I hope I was able to give them something meaningful in return ❤️
As we reach the conclusion of this story, I’d like to say: THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS I DIDN’T INCLUDE IN THIS LONG-ASS STORY IT WOULD SERIOUSLY BLOW YOUR MIND. THE AMOUNT OF CONTENT WE PUT TOGETHER. THE EVENTS WE HAD, THE THINGS WE SAW, THE PLACES WE WENT. IT WOULD TAKE TRIPLE THE WORDS TO INCLUDE EVERYTHING I DID, SO YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO TAKE IT FROM ME HOW TRULY EPIC IT ALL WAS ☺️
I’ll leave you with two last pieces of content I’d like to share.
First, memes rock. Memes are awesome. I know there’s a lot of debate in online marketing spaces about brands using memes and the legal issue that might come with them. I’m not saying ignore those things, the legal issues are definitely real. But, sometimes, you gotta say fuck it and make an awesome post and deal with an email from legal telling you to run it by them next time. Sorry, Jorge Martinez & Jim Carlson (love you, Jorge Martinez & Jim Carlson).
Last, but certainly not least, I haven’t mentioned a single thing about our onboard entertainment at Virgin Voyages. There isn’t much to say except it’s probably the greatest collection of original entertainment created not just in the cruise industry but in the entire history of the world. The creatives and minds behind the shows we offer have done something people will struggle to replicate for years to come. And that’s without mentioning all of the performers and cast members who have more talent on the tip of their pinkies than many of us regular people can dream of having. You are all wonderful, exquisite, unbelievable humans for all of the things you do. One of our shows, Duel Reality, was so epic that they’re now showing it on Broadway! It used to be the other way around; Broadway shows were brought to cruises. But Virgin always does things differently.
I’ll leave you with one final post. This post means so much to me because this show means so much to me. The show is called UNTITLED DANCESHOWPARTY THING. There are no words to describe it because nothing done before or after can be compared to this experience. You are magical humans, Ani Taj and Sam Pinkleton. One day, when I have a bunch of money to blow, I will give you much of it to create a brand-new show.
I had nothing to do with this show except for the fact that I’ve seen it live like 10 different times, and I stand front and center screaming and encouraging the performers every time. I always discover something new, and I always feel all the feels when I get to experience it. I’m also lucky to say I’ve made many friends who were performers in all of these shows (Ships In The Night & Another Rose, I haven’t forgotten about you. You are amazing as well!), and I continue to be in awe of the way they move, sing, and every single thing they do when the bright lights are on. To me, you are everything that is beautiful and is right about this deeply flawed world.
I had never been on a cruise before Virgin Voyages, but now I’m forever a Sailor 🚢❤️
