Catching Up with Azamara Cruises’ Dondra Ritzenthaler

It’s only been a week, but Dondra Ritzenthaler, the new CEO at Azamara Cruises, is already letting her love for travel advisors influence how she runs the show.

“We’ve already gone in and made changes to co-op, to bonus commissions, to creating an Elite Desk, to what is called the Azamara alliance, which is a landing spot for all things travel advisors,” she told TMR during a call last week, just four days into the job.

It’s not surprising that these would be among Ritzenthaler’s first changes as CEO of Azamara. During her 20 years at Celebrity Cruises she became well-known for her appreciation of travel advisors.

It’s not ony travel advisors who hold a special place in her heart. So, too, does Azamara, which is part of the reason she chose to come out of retirement to lead the brand. 

“When Azamara was brought into the Royal Caribbean family, Dan Hanrahan was the president who brought it out. I ran sales and Lisa Lutoff-Perlo ran hotel… We helped create the name, and so I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Azamara… When you do something like that, you really very much care about it and you never stop caring.”

Of course, to say that Ritzenthaler came out of retirement implies she intended to stay retired. That’s not quite the case. 

“When I retired, I always said I was going to retire, recharge, and reassess,” she told TMR.

Getting the call
It wasn’t long after she retired that Dan Hanrahan, now Chairman of the board for Azamara’s parent company Sycamore Partners, called Ritzenthaler to offer her the job of CEO.

“I know I was given the opportunity because I had the relationship and had worked with Dan and he had confidence in me,” she said.

But she also added, “That’s also a reason that I was given this opportunity because travel advisors know I love ’em, need ’em, respect ’em, admire ’em.”

Had it been another brand offering her the position, Ritzenthaler probably still would have taken the job.

“I really wanted to prove to myself and everybody that I could do it, and that I could create a winning culture,” she said of her decision. “It is a super personal thing for me and I want to prove to myself and everybody that we can crush it as a team.”

Immediate plans
While Ritzenthaler has some plans in mind for Azamara, she told TMR she’s “humble enough” to start out her tenure at the cruise line doing three things: listening, learning, and linking together.

“The first thing I’m going to do is get out on the ships and listen to the crew on board, the captains, the hotel directors, listen to our loyal guests, and then our travel advisors… And once we as a leadership team listen to all of those, I think we’re going to see the things that really bubble to the top: things that we need to keep doing, things that we need to start doing, and maybe even somethings that we need to stop doing.”

Though her listening tour is still in the early stages, Ritzenthaler told TMR she has four pillars for whatever plans she enacts. She calls them the four P’s: people, product, partnerships, and profitability. 

People come first, she said.

“I think when you take care of your people and you let them know that they mean a lot to you, they want to work with you and for you.”

Azamara is already delivering on product, with net promoter scores that are “extraordinarily high.”

Travel advisors – “the beating heart”
The third pillar is partnerships, which encompasses travel advisors, suppliers, charter and MICE partners, and ports.

Currently, travel advisors, along with some charter and MICE business, account for 85% of Azamara sales.

“They’re the heartbeat of it… travel advisors are our lifeline. If we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t be successful.”

Along with the changes already made to co-op and bonus commissions, Azamara has plans to add more Seminars at Sea and to bring back its World Academy education and marketing tool, which it had been forced to sunset after transitioning away from Royal Caribbean Cruises. 

“Those are just a very few things right out of the gate, but they are authentic and genuine things that we’re doing to be easy to do business with because we need them,” she said.

As an aside, she added it’s been easy to make some of these changes because of how quickly Azamara moves because it’s a small company.

“One of the things that I already can tell that I love is we sit at the table, we talk about it, we make a decision, and we go do it… that’s the upside to being in an environment where it’s a small company and not a lot of layers.”

Another area of focus for Ritzenthaler will be getting in front of more advisors. Expect to see Azamara at more conferences.

“I think one really big opportunity with travel advisors is to know more about who we are. We don’t want to be a secret… I think the travel advisor community knows Azamara and knows who we are, but what I want to make sure that we give them really clear direction and really clear brand positioning and who we are, who we’re after, how to really promote and sell us… We want to be loud and proud when we’re at these conferences,” she said.

New ships?
A natural question for the leader of a small brand like Azamara is what are the plan for growing the brand?

“I’ve been transparent that I love our four ships,” Ritzenthaler said of her conversations with Sycamore Partners. “I love who we are in the market. I think we’ve got a wonderful, clear brand positioning – we are the leader in small ship destination immersion – but I want to go more places. And the only way you can do that is to grow.”

Sycamore, she said, is open to growth, but has certain expectations first.

“They want to make sure that they see us become even more profitable and really fill our ships at great rates that the consumers want to pay because of what we deliver,” Ritzenthaler said.  

If she can do that, she said, then she’ll be able to sit down with them to have “a real meaningful conversation about newbuilds.”

Keeping busy
It’s no surprise that Ritzenthaler already has plans in motion, including getting out on the brand’s four-ship fleet. Anyone who has spent more than five minutes with her knows she’s not one for sitting around.

Between her “retirement” from Celebrity Cruises and last week when she officially took the reins at Azamara, Ritzenthaler has done anything but nothing.

She got certified to dive because her husband and two sons already are and she always had to sit on the boat while they dove. She became “way more involved” with the Baptist Cancer Institute in Miami. She cleaned out “every single thing” in her house, closet, garage, panty, refrigerator, and kids’ closets. She took a class at Columbia University on financials for non-financial executives. She took a two and a half week vacation to Europe – the longest vacation she’s taken in a long time. She spent more time with her family.

“Having said all of those amazing things, I would get up, do things, and by noon, I would look at my husband and say, I’m climbing the walls,” she admitted.