Staying with travel and leisure from yesterday, Royal Caribbean’s Richard Fain, chairman and CEO since 1988, is proving an able sea captain in this choppy economy.

The Miami-based global cruise company operates 36 ships under four brands, including Celebrity Cruises and Royal Caribbean International. Despite pressures on consumer spending and rising fuel costs, the company continues to chart an admirable financial course. Full-year revenues in 2007 were $6.1 billion, with net income of $2.82 per share; 2008 is off to a good start, with first quarter net income of $75.6 million, or $0.35 per share.

One strategy, Fain told Wharton B-School, is the expansion of RC’s onboard meetings, conference, even convention business, with companies accounting for nearly 15% of bookings. His “continuous improvement” mantra keeps satisfaction levels high— new bookings are up 10%, and some 30% of RC’s “guests” come back--and price-wise, cruising beats air- and land-based travel.

Forget about that cliché of cruise passengers as “newly wed or nearly dead” too: Fain says his demography is evenly split between men and women, at an average age of 42 years old and with a family income between $50,000 and $75,000. “We are not recession proof,” he says, “but recession resistant.”

Cruise ship construction is not shrinking—it’s getting monolithic. After delivering a giant new Freedom-class vessel to Royal Caribbean in 2006, the famed Aker Yards in Finland now has a two-billion euro assignment on its books: two colossal Genesis-class ships for Royal Caribbean, to be delivered in 2009 and 2010. I visited Aker last year; the scale of these ships, the largest ever built, is mind-boggling.

Happy travels this weekend, wherever you are bound.

Jeff Heilman

5/9/08