My Nguyen

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with My Nguyen of Holland America Line and Seabourn. My, thanks so much for joining us today. How are you?

My Nguyen: I’m doing great. Thank you for having me, Stacy. So happy to be here.

SSR: I’m so happy you are here. So let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

MN: I grew up in Seattle. I was a refugee family. I was born in Vietnam and my family escaped after the fall of Saigon, and we were super lucky to be sponsored over to Seattle by an Episcopalian church. And so Seattle is what I call home ever since I was two, when we came to the country.

SSR: So you were two. So you don’t probably remember much from Vietnam?

MN: I don’t. I really have no memory at all. My first childhood memory was actually arriving to SeaTac Airport with a lot of bright lights and a lot of people making a fuss of us because we were a refugee family that they had sponsored over. But I don’t remember Vietnam. I’ve been back several times since and feel connected to the culture. But growing up, I would say I was a Vietnamese American growing up in a Vietnamese family and trying to adapt to an American culture.

SSR: Yeah, and what was that? I mean, you were so young, so hopefully, you had time to adapt, but were there challenges as a younger kid and being in Seattle or was it somewhat more seamless of a transition since you were so young?

MN: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if I would’ve known any better at the time because I had no comparison. But I mean, when I tell my kids about my childhood memories, they’re like, “Oh, my God, Mom, not another refugee story.” Because we grew up really, really poor and just without a lot of means. My parents had to work two jobs and learn English in between just to survive. And we had a lot of help from low income housing and from the local community and that kind of thing. But I would say my childhood, I was kind of that scrawny poor kid in school that was the last picked in gym class.

And I remember my childhood friend telling me I had an accent until I was 13. So just trying to figure out the language and trying to figure out schooling and that kind of thing. But I wouldn’t say that I grew up thinking I was a victim or anything. I just grew up thinking this was normal and other people had more and we had less. But I grew up in a family full of love and that’s really all that mattered. Just supportive parents and a lot of love and doesn’t really matter what your resources are, it just matters what your home base is, I think.

SSR: Yeah, well said. And what kind of jobs did your parents do? Were they creative at all or use their hands? Was there any kind of early inspiration for design from them?

MN: Oh, interesting. Yeah, my parents, I would say, probably did whatever jobs that they could have. So my dad washed dishes at a restaurant and then he ended up being a custodian at a middle school. My mom worked for a company called Airborne Express, which is the postal service local company, and she did office work there. And then she ended up, by nature, I think, of just knowing some people that sewed clothes. She got into a sewing contracting business. So she actually had a business that she ran in the basement and garage of our home with a bunch of industrial sewing machines. And she made bespoke custom fashion samples for Nordstrom or local designers that just wanted small batch, small quantity kind of things. And so I actually grew up to the sound of the sewing machine and designers walking in our front door in our little tiny house in Seattle and bolts of fabric everywhere. And I would help my mom by inspecting the clothing and cutting threads and that kind of thing. So yeah, I guess my mom, even though she hated sewing, it was a great business for her.

SSR: That’s amazing.

MN: And yeah, it’s funny, my mom did the sewing thing, but she wouldn’t say she was creative, whereas my dad, I think, was naturally an artist. And so I kind of got both from my parents because my mom is a really smart business woman, so I got this business acumen mixed with some creative side, which I’m super grateful for because that really is helpful in design, interior design career.

SSR: Exactly. Especially having both sides, the business and the design. So were you creative as a kid?

MN: Yes. I would say I was born to create and have vision and make things. I remember, actually, one of my childhood memories is living in low-income housing and my parents were working, so I was at home by myself way too young, and we had a pair of scissors and a pencil and some neighbors had newspaper in their front yard that they didn’t use anymore. So I remember taking the paper and staring at it and thinking, “What can I make?” And I ended up making this an entire city of paper dolls and paper furniture. And then I took a big sheet and scrunched it together and all of the big and small crevices were little rooms or little restaurants or that kind of thing. And I just made this little make-believe paper cut-out world because I really had nothing except for my own imagination. And it just kept me busy while my parents were working and I was a little kid. So yeah, I would say I was definitely creative from coming to this Earth.

SSR: So did you end up going to school for design or how did you get into the design world?

MN: Yeah, I remember in the eighth grade, I took this class called It’s Your Future, and I wrote down for my career inspiration, interior design, and I didn’t really even know what that was. But I think it had something to do with creativity and interiors and furniture and business. So I’m like, “That’s what I want to do.” But I actually, out of high school, I got a scholarship to run and also to do fine art. And so I went to a private liberal arts university and got a BFA in oil painting. And then from there, I further went to interior design school to fine-tune that skill, and then off I was in the work world after that.

SSR: What did you run?

MN: I was a cross country runner and a long distance track runner. And kind of funny sidebar, I had a crush on a guy on a team my sophomore year and I was really weak and my parents had just got divorced sadly, so I was really depressed and I just joined the team to get to know this guy and I sucked, like I was the last runner in the race, so slow. Ended up dumping me for this girl with bigger boobs, which was fine, but I ended up being really determined to just run faster than him at some point.

SSR: Good motivation.

MN: It’s the funny things where life leads you in these different paths. But I ended up sophomore year just improving, junior year, improving a lot. And by senior year, I was one of the fastest runners in the state of Washington. And then I got the scholarship to run in college. So thank you, Jonathan Keene, wherever you are out there in the world, for breaking my heart. It turned out really well.

SSR: Oh, my God, that’s amazing. In the state of Washington, running is so competitive there.

MN: Lots of running, especially cross country because all of the trails and outdoorsiness of it.

SSR: So you went to school, you got your degree in interior design, and did that help solidify? Did school kind of make you feel like this was the right calling?

MN: Yeah, I remember day one of orientation, everything that every professor said, I was just soaking in. And you know when you sit in a place and you just hear things and you’re like, “These are my people and this is my industry, this is my calling.”? It was that. So I was totally determined to get straight As to see if I could do it, and totally determined to just give it 200% in every class. And I had a great experience, and super grateful for that. And yeah, it was a great chapter in my life before going into the world when I actually graduated right after 9/11. So it was just a really challenging time because I remember the counselor saying, “Okay, there’s no design jobs, so if you get anything, count your blessings.”

And I ended up getting this two part-time jobs. One part-time job was for this interior design firm that did multifamily. And the other one was this crazy cruise ship internship for Holland America. And their headquarters is three blocks away from my school, and they just happened to walk over during portfolio review to find an intern. And I met the designer and there, and she asked me to interview the next day, and I lived 30 minutes away. And that was the days when you had those big leather portfolios, nothing was digital. And I remember schlepping this big leather portfolio on the bus to make it in time and schlepping it over to the Holland America headquarters and showing my portfolio of projects and color boards and things. And she hired me on the spot part-time.

And then I ended up being an interior design intern for her for six months, and then also for Markie Nelson Interior Design for another six months. Both of them offered full time after that stint. And I was at this path crossroads where I was like, “Do I go with this really obvious design firm that does true interior design or do I stick with this crazy cruise ship thing?” And I think my heart just always does best when I jump in the deep end and I’m super challenged. So I followed my gut, I went the Holland America cruise ship route, and 20 something years later, I’m still in the industry. So I’m glad I followed my gut.

SSR: Yeah. What was your gut saying? Just it was something different? What drew you to this cruising industry?

MN: I was drawn by the challenge. I was attracted by the travel. I literally had to travel all around the world to follow ships, to do refurbishments on ships. I love the pace of it. It was just crazy fast how quickly things had to get done because it’s this moving target, literally a resort that goes from country to country in days. And I just thought it was just so crazy and bizarre. I mean, in school, the cool thing to do is to design restaurants. And so my portfolio was all of these restaurants and very little residential design. Cruise ships was not even on my radar, which is ironic because the headquarters is three blocks away. But once I got into it, I thought, “Wow, this is actually restaurants, hotels, accommodations, lounges, bars, and lobbies, all in one floating resort and then some.” So it was just super intriguing.

SSR:  And what was your biggest learning curve when you started? Because I mean, it is, like you said, it’s all the things, but it also has to float and all work in one specific space and be on water.

MN: Yeah. So many things to learn. I got that internship because the department at the time was not really set up as a design department. It was more of a one woman show that needed a whole lot of help. And then at that time, it wasn’t even a lot of creative design, it was for more TI improvement kind of things. That was the role that I had, is fly to a ship, have a dry dock, replace a bunch of carpet, blue is blue. It wasn’t that creative. So my learning curve when I did that was just the whole project management logistics challenge of getting a project implemented on time, on budget, and then the next day, you have guests coming on for their vacations. The material cannot miss the boat. There is no room for error. I actually did that for three years. And at the time, I thought I couldn’t authentically call myself a designer because I was doing creative things, but I was being more creative with the project management implementation side rather than the actual design.

And so I left and joined a boutique interior design firm called NB Design. And at the time, they did super high end residential. And when I left Holland America a few months later, Holland America called, knowing that I had joined a local firm and they wanted to partner with a design firm that wasn’t in Europe because most of their design was done in Europe. There were so many projects and they wanted to do some design locally as well. And so they ended up being a main client of ours for the next nine years that I was at NB Design. So I had this interesting experience of doing super high residential cruise ship design, some hospitality and commercial design in between. And that’s when I really developed my design skills, I think, and could authentically call myself an interior designer. We did a lot of new build projects for Holland America.

And I guess it was 12 years ago now that we were designing a new prototype ship called the Koningsdam. And they kind of had this light bulb moment where they’re like, “Would you want to come back to Holland America and start a design department and lead that?” And then I kind of felt like I was at this crossroads again, where I was at this amazing interior design firm. I mean, Carrara marble top, conference tables, overlooking the water, working 30 hours a week, designing the richest people’s 20th homes that you can imagine. And then this cruise ship opportunity where it’s just crazy and chaotic. And I knew what I was signing up for because I had still been as a client, they were a client of ours.

But I followed my gut again. It’s like when I left Holland America the first time, what I really wanted to do for them was to design, but it just wasn’t structured in a way that I could do that. And so that’s why I left. Now, I could actually do that and start a department and truly help the company. And so I did that and I’ve been in this role for about 12 years now.

SSR: And so at NB Design was there one project that you think really helped you, as you said, get that title of interior designer? 

MN: We had a lot of NDA clients there, which was great exposure because you had either clients where you had to go through the owner’s surrogate or you had ones where they’re super famous, but you’re sitting there meeting with the wife at the family table and you’re like, “I cannot believe this is happening right now.” And I think one of those projects in particular, the client didn’t quite know what they wanted, but they wanted to create a dwelling for their family. And you can imagine the uber luxury rich people have a lot of different dwellings, but their home space, their safe zone where they can be totally vulnerable and let it all hang out with their kids, that’s actually a quite intimate space. It’s not like what you would imagine as the tens and thousands of square feet of luxury home.

So I had the experience of designing those spaces with that family, and it was really such an amazing experience. They happened to be really kind clients as well, which was great, and they wanted to work directly with the designer rather than go through the owner’s surrogate, which was even more amazing. So it really opened up my world to perspective. You could have all the money in the world, but really, what you want is the same thing that anybody wants, even if you don’t have money, which is a comfortable environment that you can be yourself with your family with. And that was really impactful for me.

SSR: That’s amazing. Did you like residential design? 

MN: Yeah, I love residential design. I actually have a side hustle where I do residential design because I just have a long list of clientele. And during the pandemic, the cruise industry was hit so hard, they reduced our hours and our salary, which was totally understandable. And I was kind of the one woman standing, unfortunately. They made the decision to keep me and I had to let go of my entire team, which was the most heartbreaking experience of my life. But anyways, I actually had time to do other kinds of designs. So I just had a lot of old clients that called me up and they were like, “Hey, are you available by chance to help us design our offices and our homes?” or “I’m bored to death, can we do color consulting or something?” I’m like, “You know, I actually have time for that.” So I developed this side hustle, which I do only when I have time on the side because my day job is quite busy. But it keeps me creative in different ways. It’s such a breath of fresh air to design things that don’t have to pass IMO and to have budgets where it’s a little different.

SSR: So let’s go back to COVID. You had to let go of your team. How big was your team at the time?

MN: My team was 12 at the time. And let’s see, now, I was in the role 12 years ago, so at that point, I was what, nine years into it? And it took me a solid seven years to build a dream team. And the first seven years was everything from flying to Italy every three weeks for projects, doing that design work on the weekends because during the day, I had to focus on building a team, focus on the dry docks, focus on the ships. Meanwhile, I had a kind of newborn and toddler at the time at home. It was just so crazy and chaotic and busy and I learned so much, but it was just a lot of heartache too. And so after about seven years, I finally… I found the right people and we were a unit and we were making such a big impact on the ships, and it was just so golden. I was just so happy.

And then the pandemic happened, and I remember getting the call saying, “You basically have to lay off your team by noon the next day before they get their notices.” And it was just so heartbreaking. I actually contacted the whole team and we got on a call together that night and I was like, “I’m not supposed to tell you, but this is happening.” And it ended up being this four-hour therapy session of all of us crying and sharing and talking about how much we meant to each other. And that was a really impactful moment of my career, I think, because I was proud, as this mama bear figure, to have grown a great team that really respected each other and the fact that it was at this place and time we had no control over, that most of the people would lose their jobs was so hard, but they weren’t resentful or angry about it. We were just sharing more as a family and they’ve all landed on their feet in really great ways, and I couldn’t be more proud. But yeah, that was a hard time, really hard time.

SSR: Have you been able to build back your team since Covid?

MN: Yeah, so I have new team. We’re small now. It’s a group of six and some familiar faces and some new ones as well. And it’s a totally different setup now. I mean, we’ve gone through four different reorgs, I think, since the pandemic. But yeah, I’m super proud of the team that I have now. I miss my old team, but with life, things change and things evolve, and that’s the beauty of business and life.

SSR: Yeah. I’m sure you still keep in touch with a couple of them.

MN: Definitely. Yeah, I do. Yeah. And I still mentor a lot of them actually, so it’s nice to stay connected that way as well.

SSR: Coming out of the pandemic and the increased, want, desire, I guess, for cruising, I mean, I think a lot of people were ready to travel again and I think cruises were a great way of seeing so many different places so quickly. I mean, they always have been, but I think there was this renewed interest in that. How has that affected you? And also, how you look at design for a cruise?

MN: Yeah. Gosh, I’m trying to find the right words because it was just so crazy and emotional at the same time. I mean, I think we can all agree that the cruise industry was hit the hardest when the pandemic happened because you had these nightmares of people stuck on ships and you had this pandemic where nobody knew how it was spread and what it could do to you, and it was just a really, really hard time. So the industry, the cruise industry was completely devastated. And then it was a really interesting observation of human behavior because even though you had to do these crazy protocols, you just have to be tested with this thing stuck up your nose, every randomly, every day or two. People were like, “When can we cruise again? When can we cruise again?”

SSR: It was the hardest hit and then all of a sudden, everyone was like, “Wait, we got to get back on the ship.” And I know there’s people that love to cruise and they book them out three years, but I feel all of a sudden, it was more people wanted to try it. I don’t know.

MN:  And if you think about it, people were kind of locked in their homes for two years. I mean, what a crazy psychological experiment that is. And so honestly, I think a cruise was one of the safest places to travel after the pandemic because the protocols were so hard that we had everything dialed and contained and figured out. And so it shows innovation really comes out of tragedy in some ways. And so the it was just completely insane. I mean, the industry itself laid off 50%. So you can imagine ramping back up again like 200%, just like the learning curve and all of that, going back and rebuilding a team. And things are different now and protocols are different and some ports are open, but some ports aren’t. And from a design perspective, I think I just had a totally different view of personal space, human interactions, how to design for people to have these authentic experiences that they just couldn’t have for two years. It was just really kind of bizarre and crazy. I don’t know if I can articulate it.

SSR: And I mean, you’ve been working on cruises for 22 years. How do you think or how have you watched and help change the level of design on cruises or maybe even the last 5 to 10 years? 

MN: It has.

SSR: It did. And I think especially on Seabourn and Holland, there is such a higher level of design than, say, in the past decade.

MN: Yeah, I would say when I was an intern 20 something years ago, I felt like people went on a cruise regardless because there was the mystique of cruising. So you went on a ship, it kind of didn’t really matter how it was designed or it was kind of all designed the same. And now, fast-forward 20 something years, the industry has grown so much. I mean, you have now a expedition ultra luxury ship where there’s 200 guests on board and you step on board and it’s all-inclusive and you have your champagne and caviar at first step in, or you have these mega cruises that are over 4,000 guests, that’s not even including crew, that have two decks of water slides and ice rinks and 45 restaurants. And the design of cruise ships and the cruising experience has changed so much over the last two decades of what options are out there. I’d like to say that there’s a cruise for everyone because I truly believe that.

I mean, if you have the stigma that cruising is just these really large ships where it’s just buffet restaurants everywhere and people are just there eating all day long, that is a stigma reputation if you don’t know cruising. But I would say if you further explore it, it’s so many different options for different demographics and different ways of vacationing and experiencing the world. And on top of that, you get to see the world in such ease that the way that design has evolved with creating these resorts that float on water have been pretty amazing.

SSR: And has there been one project recently that has opened that you’re really proud of?

MN:  We delivered a new built ship during the pandemic, so I had to do some design work on that ship before the delivery. And what I would do before that, before the pandemic, is fly to Italy every three weeks and we do mockups and we have these big meetings and everything. But with the pandemic, I had to do all of that virtually. So it was a really interesting test of my vision capabilities and communication capabilities to get the right outcome for the ship when it was delivered because we were all just kind of going off of experience and vision and a little bit of hope just to make sure that these phases turned out well. And thank God that they did. So there is that. We just launched a new restaurant called Morimoto By Sea, which I’m super proud of, and that is a restaurant on the Nieuw Amsterdam with a partnership with Iron Chef Morimoto, and he is our fresh fish ambassador and has this purpose-built restaurant that we designed behind the scenes.

We had four months to turn that baby around. So it was like, “Here’s the concept [inaudible 00:29:56] coming up and here’s the tiny window and just go.” So we did it. It was kind of a miracle that we had vendors just jumping backwards to make product in time and everything. And we made it in the dry dock. Everyone was really happy with the design. In the cruise world, it’s actually predominantly men, but in this particular project between the contractor and the designers and the implementers, it was 95% women, which was pretty cool. So yeah, that’s a little project that just happened that I’m super proud of as well.

SSR: Yeah. And you work with a lot of different collaborators. What do you look for in a collaborator in a design firm to help you create these spaces? Many, like you said, on a short timeframe or there’s a big learning curve or all the different things.

MN: Yeah, I am really drawn to design firms that have great vision and are really collaborative. Designers are amazing storytellers and amazing visionaries. And if you have a firm that can do that, but they don’t collaborate well with you, the outcome of the project is not necessarily the most successful in my opinion, because at the end of the day, you have to operate these spaces as well. And design has a huge part to do with that. Being a designer myself, I’m super sensitive to that. So creative collaborators that really care about how the space functions and doesn’t just care about the portfolio bragging rights piece is what I’m really attracted to. It’s another trend in cruising now is collaborating more with land-based hospitality designers because people want these ships to feel like hotels as well.

And so my internal team, we have this word called marinizing. So sometimes we’ll say, “Okay, we want to collaborate with these great firms.” And then the internal conversation is like, “Okay, but are we going to have to marinize their design? Because do they actually care about designing this on a ship or do they just care about designing it for the sake of saying they designed it?” So yeah, the creativity piece, it’s always really important, but the make it happen piece is probably what would tip my decision of who to choose.

SSR: Yeah. What’s the biggest thing you usually have to marinize?

MN: Materials, actually. So for example, textiles, fabrics, you can’t just put a beautiful residential fabric on a cruise ship. You’ll sneeze on it and it’ll deteriorate and it’ll burn and I’ll get fired for it. So a lot of textiles, we have to marinize a lot. Designs, like a designer sometimes will show a really beautiful concept, but is it durable? How is that going to be made? Sustainability is really important to my team as well. And so is it not only made well, but is it made in a way that can disassemble quickly so that when it’s at the end of lifecycle, we could do something with it in a way that works with the short timeframes we have? So yeah, just kind of full package of marinizing things.

SSR: I love the word marinize. And then we did a panel on cruise ship design, and we had the cruise ship builders there and the thing that amazed me was weight. And you might have this beautiful chandelier in mind, but cost might be one thing, but weight is a huge thing. Do you think that’s a misconception too for designers, not realizing the floatability aspect of it all?

MN: I‘m so glad you said that because to me, it was such an obvious thing in my brain that I didn’t even verbalize it, but absolutely. So weight, and also that your floating resort is constantly moving and shaking and vibrating, so we can have this beautiful dining room restaurant with this amazing chandelier. It’s like, “Oh, my God.” That is vibrating, shaking, and you’ve got a billion parts of crystal. It’s like, where do we even start with that? But there’s such wonderful experts in the industry and in the trade that can marinize that because they see the vision and they make it happen. So yes, definitely collaborative with a lot of expertise in the marine world.

SSR: And talk more about sustainability, because I do know it’s such a, from our previous conversation, such a big focus, as you said, for you and your team. And how are you pushing that envelope and how are you making sure that each decision has a sustainability conversation as part of it?

MN: It’s just a personal passion of mine, I think. I love the cruise industry so much, and I want my kids and my grandkids to experience it in the same or in better ways. And I know that the cruise industry gets a lot of heat on the sustainability side, but I kind of want to turn that back and make people think of a different perspective because the cruise industry actually does a ton of work on the sustainability side just because we have to. I mean, just the efficiency of a ship and how it’s run, you don’t have the option to even waste things. You have to recycle them and consolidate them, even food waste, you have to separate them, that kind of thing. But on the part that I have control the most is on the interior design side. And I feel that there’s a lot of great potential in changing the industry that way, not just for cruise, but for hospitality, because we are at the beginning phases of sustainability, I think.

We have that super power of vision and of leveraging scale and talking to our vendors about what we want because they’re putting their research dollars on what designers are going to specify. And one of my personal passions is keeping things out of landfills. So how do we do more circular design? And some of the things that we’re spearheading, I feel we’re leaders in because we’re actually doing it instead of just talking about it. And I’m finding that people really care, but people just don’t know where to start. And so we’re taking it upon ourselves to have these hard conversations, awkward conversations about how is this going to be paid for? How do we stay within our budget but meet our goals? All of these things that people are just waiting for the Guinea pig to show what it is and then jump into the industry and do it.

So we have so many pilot projects going on right now. We did one that was quite successful that was keeping carpet out of landfill because we generate a ton of carpet on ships. It’s the main flooring that passes IMO. And so I would say 80% of cruise ships is carpet. And so when we’re at dry docks and we’re replacing tens and thousands of carpet, you have a lot of carpet waste. So we partnered with one of our carpet vendors in Denmark, Dansk Wilton, and we did this pilot where they took our carpet waste, figured out what to do with it, and we’ve turned it into things like notebooks or artwork or things that we can sell back on the ships. But sidebar is I am now overseeing design for our Alaska properties that are land-based. So we have hotels and resorts as well in Alaska.

SSR: That’s a good thing.

MN: And so now, I’m trying to figure out how to use that product. We kind of miss on the carbon footprint to get in into Alaska, but I don’t have the IMO restrictions. And so I’m just trying to reuse these wasteful products that would go into the landfill, back into spaces again. But that’s just, I mean, I’m not going to save the world making notebooks out of carpet waste, but I think the point is that we’ve collaborated with enough partners to figure out that things like this are possible with shared accountability. And when you have partners that really do care and you’re all on the same vision and path together, it really does happen and it doesn’t need to cost more money. It just takes a lot of time and a lot of conversations. And so we’re doing this with aluminum.

We have so much outdoor furniture that has a lifecycle that needs to replace, instead of it going in landfills, figuring out how to get that recycled and money put back into our account so that we could spend more money on more furniture, that kind of thing. Textile waste, so that is getting retrieved. We’re partnering with Andriali, which is a Turkish mill, and they’re melting down all of our textile waste and turning into products that we’re putting back in our ships, like those canvas bags you see with our logo. All of this has a circular story that we’re just working really hard to turn it into a reality. And it takes time and it just takes a whole lot of lot from different parties. But I would say it’s one of the things that gets me out of bed every day. It gives me so much purpose. And just to see the progress that you can make by just having those conversations and doing something about it rather than just talking about it can be really impactful for the industry, I think.

SSR: And so these properties that you have in Alaska too, are you having to rethink what they look like as well?

MN: Yeah, this is the new thing for me. It used to be run by a totally different arm of the company, and now, with all of these reorgs and everything like that, we’re just sharing our sources more. So it was pretty fun. My first site visit was actually through Denali National Park in the winter time. It was -17 degrees.

SSR: Not the warmest time to go there, but okay.

MN: I mean, literally everything was shut down. So we’re going around with flashlights because we had a time sensitive project that needed to happen. I’ve since been back in 60 degree weather, which seemed like a complete luxury and with all the lights on and seeing how the spaces operate. So that was a lot different experience. But yeah, there’s some definite gems out there. We own trains and motor coaches and hotels and resorts in Alaska. And Alaska is kind of the bread and butter of cruising. And so it’s on a lot of people’s bucket lists. And over 50% of guests that go to Alaska actually choose to do land-based experiences as well, because there’s just no other way to see that wilderness that’s easy. You can certainly do it on your own. It’s just not as luxurious. But when you start on a cruise ship and then you get taken via train or motor coach to a property that we already own, and then you can fly home or go back in a cruise ship, it’s a pretty amazing experience to add to the bucket list.

SSR: You said that cruisers want the cruise ships to feel like a hotel. But what do you think they’re really looking for today? 

MN: I don’t know if it’s a noticed thing or just a gut feeling that I have, but I feel like versatility is going to be something that we’re going to need to think about. If you are multi-generation, so let’s say grandma and grandpa want to have the trip of their life and they want to take six families, and you have a kid that’s four years old and a grandparent that’s 85 years old, that’s a whole lot of people vacationing in one setting, and they all want to do different things. So to be able to account for that and also to let them see the world, because you literally see a different country a day or every other day is an amazing experience. But definitely something to think about. How are the sleeping accommodations? If you have multiple families, how are you versatile in the way that you design your suites and your penthouses and your standard guest rooms and your cabins in order to possibly accommodate that kind of experience? It’s just an example.

SSR: Yeah. Is there one part of the process that you love the most?

MN: I really love the collaboration process. I love just sitting over a glass of wine, spitballing a bunch of ideas, and then those ideas either turn into something amazing or are epic failures, but then from that, other ideas are formed and then you have this outcome that was basically born from a lot of different minds and different expertise that got you to the outcome that you have. I love that part of it, and I love being a main part of it or leading that process because it takes a skill to bring out the best in people, I think. Not everybody wants to voice their opinion right away, and being in a big group is super scary sometimes. But when you create an environment where everyone feels like they can speak up and just spitball ideas, and then from that, you have pretty awesome projects, that’s my favorite. Yeah.

SSR: What do you think keeps you passionate about this industry?

MN: I think the hospitality industry, for me, checks all the boxes of things that I love. Food, comfort, experience, travel, and environment where I could be with my loved ones and remember where I was or what I did or what I ate. So I mean, there’s nothing that compares to that, be it on land or on a ship. Just that in general is it hits all of the human factors of what we love.

What keeps me passionate about it is just making it better, really. It’s so great now, but there’s always room to make things more sustainable and make things more efficient and make things more open to different demographics. When I grew up, I mean, I didn’t even dream of staying at a hotel or eating at a restaurant. We grew up so poor, but when I would observe those things and dream about those things, that’s why I’m in the industry now, is to make that available for anyone that everybody has the right to be in an environment where they can be themselves with their loved ones and have a memorable experience. That comes at every price point, and that’s okay. And how great that we’re in an industry that we can provide that for people.

SSR: We always end with the question that is the podcast or is the title of the podcast, I should say. So what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way?

MN: Oh, gosh. Lessons learned. So many lessons. There’s things that I live by, so maybe that translates to a lesson. And that is instead of doing 500 things, do 20 things 500 times. And that lesson to me is that it really develops, it fine-tunes and edits down what you’re really good at, and it allows you to delegate or to elevate others that are good at things you’re not good at, so that you could create an amazing team that can divide and conquer and make amazing projects and designs. So I guess my lesson is figure out what you’re really good at, fine-tune it, and put aside the ego, elevate others that are better than you at other things, and just do kick ass design. Divide and conquer. Do it.

SSR: Divide and conquer. I love that. And elevating. Hope everyone hears that. Thank you so much for spending these last 40 or so minutes with us. It was such a pleasure to catch up with you and hope to see you in real life soon.

MN: Thank you, Stacy. For sure. We’ll see you soon, and thank you so much for having me. It was an honor.