Catching Up with Margaritaville at Sea’s Ron Gulaskey

Coming to Margaritaville at Sea from a legacy premium cruise brand, senior vice president of sales and trade relations, Ron Gulaskey, didn’t realize he was going to be facing an uphill battle to transition Margaritaville at Sea from a low-cost, mostly B2C business to a more premium brand that relies heavily on the trade.

Not only did an entirely new backend have to be built to service the trade but even travel partners he’s known for years were leery about buying into the brand.

For years, this one- , sometimes two-vessel entity had existed under different names – first Celebration Cruise Line, later Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line, and then Margaritaville at Sea in 2021, initially as part of a licensing agreement.

Though not technically the same company, each of these brands had a few things in common: one or two older ships sailing one- or two-night Bahama getaways at very inexpensive prices. They pulled in a mostly drive market, did almost all their business direct to the consumer, and didn’t have the best reputations.

That all began to change in December 2023, when the private equity firm Sycamore Partners acquired a controlling interest in the company, making it an entirely new company. (Sycamore also owns Azamara Cruises.)

But even then, it wasn’t smooth sailing. In an effort to grow the brand quickly, mistakes were made. Margaritaville Paradise was launched too early resulting in uneven reviews. The initial trade-focused sales team wasn’t responsive, further alienating advisors who had been willing to give the brand a try. The backend permitted advisors to make a booking but then required them to give up control of that booking once it was made.

In early 2025, Gulaskey was brought in to fix things.  

(Both Dondra Ritzenthaler, former senior vice president of sales for the Americas at Celebrity and now CEO of Azamara Cruises, and Dan Hanrahan, former CEO of Celebrity Cruises and now Board member at Sycamore Partners, were instrumental in bringing Gulaskey to Margaritaville at Sea.)

“It was 100% a conscious effort,” Gulaskey told TMR. “It started March of this year… they wanted me to come over here and build the trade. That was my whole reason for coming here, to get the trade numbers up.”

One of his first jobs was to replace the sales team.

“The salespeople that were here before this group did a horrible job of responding to clients, helping them, working with them. They were never proactive.”

As a result, some travel agencies and agency groups were skeptical.

“So many people said, I’ve got to trust you guys before I start up new business,” he said.

To combat this, Gulaskey replaced the team with “people who have great trade records, who understand the trade, and have the relationship building to grow the trade.”

Next came the new backend booking system, which was already under construction when Gulaskey started.

“I accelerated it because we had to have this for the trade,” he said. “With this change, you own the customer. Whenever you book, you can add all the amenities. You can do the payments. You can cancel it, add to it. You own it throughout the process.”

The feedback from the advisor community has been fantastic, he said.

“It’s amazing how many travel advisors when I first started, said I’m not going to work with you until I can book and not have to call your call center. Now, they’re all coming in and booking cruises.”

Why the Switch from Direct to Trade-Focused?

While Gulaskey did not go into specific details about the future plans for Margaritaville at Sea, it is clear that the brand has ambitions that extend beyond two-day party getaways. Since its inception, Margaritaville has pushed to expand its portfolio – from just two- and three-night cruises to four- and five-nights, and now even one-week cruises. The company added a second fully refurbished ship and has a third ship joining the fleet next year. Its oldest ship, Margaritaville Paradise will undergo a massive refurbishment early next year as well.

All of that to raise the caliber of guest that’s coming onboard and bring up the cruise fare – and give travel advisors a product worth selling, which in turn will bring an even better caliber of guest and continue to raise the cruise fare.

“We didn’t want to be the booze cruise company,” he said.

“The quality of the client that sails on a two-night is very different than one that sails on a five- or seven-night one… We want to bring a quality client, not the ones that just do a two-night getaway, so we have to find the right people. The majority of those buy through travel partners… We need to get to travel advisors.”

The work Gulaskey and his team are doing is starting to pay off.

“It’s been a slow build, but we’re well into double digits now… There’s nothing better than everyday we get a report and we see how the trade is growing every week.”

His goal overall, he added, is 40% by mid-2026, “just because we started in such a hole.”

The Uphill Battle of Preconception

But getting travel advisors onboard didn’t prove to be as easy as Gulaskey had anticipated.

As he began to approach trade partners he’d worked with in the past, he encountered negative reactions, from people associating the brand with Bahamas Paradise or remembering when the Paradise was given a “no sail” order by the CDC – before Margaritaville at Sea even existed – to

“Our biggest thing was trying to refocus people when they heard something about the company. What year was that? The majority of the time people had a comment it was from 2022 or 2023. Guys, it wasn’t even our ship at that time.”

Even today, Gulaskey said when he goes to a trade partner to do a training event, he inevitably gets some comment referring to pre-Margaritaville at Sea.

Quoting Dondra Ritzenthaler, with whom he worked for many years at Celebrity, Gulaskey said, “We need people to look through the front windshield, not the rearview mirror.”

Changing over the sales team has helped, Gulaskey told TMR. Members of the team come from a wide gamut of premium brands, including Celebrity Cruises, Universal, and Club Med.

“Most of us know a lot of travel advisors from the past. They see that all of us were successful where we were and for us to go from one of these big brands… we wouldn’t have changed mid-career for the wrong thing, because none of us were let go. We all chose to come here.”

He added, “I’m lucky that myself and other people here, we have nice reputations in the industry so it opened the doors to a lot of people.”

As evidence of its commitment to the travel advisor community, Margaritaville at Sea also joined ASTA, with Gulaskey serving on the Proud Partner Committee (a committee he has chaired in the past during his time at Celebrity Cruises.)

Stay tuned for Part II, in which Gulaskey explains what makes Margaritaville at Sea different from other cruise lines, the unexpected void in the cruise market the line is filling, and what advisors can look forward to in 2026.