Data Wants Your Honesty

We live in a big data world. Even so, “data-driven decisions,” while reassuring, are no guarantee for success. Data itself doesn’t lie. But it will mislead you every time if you only hear what you want it to say. As you read this, think of those larger-than-life Royal Caribbean ships. It all started with a simple mind shift driven by data and inquiry and belief.

What Royal Caribbean Taught Me About Strategy, Experience, and Seeing What Others Miss

For a long time, the cruise industry ran on a simple, reliable growth engine: first-time cruisers. Year after year, roughly 10% more people tried cruising than the previous year. And once they did, there was a 90% chance they’d cruise again, usually with the same cruise line. This simple formula fueled everything. Ship orders. Marketing budgets. Five-year plans.

Then the first-time cruiser growth rate slowed.

Not collapsed. Not reversed. Just slowed.

And panic set in.

Ships had already been ordered years in advance, $300 - $400 million commitments made under the assumption that growth would continue forever. Suddenly, demand wasn’t keeping pace. Everyone started asking the same question, over and over:

What did we get wrong? After all, the data said nothing was wrong.

When “Good” Data Becomes Dangerous

Royal Caribbean had no shortage of research. They invested heavily in a rolling quantitative study, surveying cruisers across brands and people who had never cruised at all. On paper, the results were comforting.

Food? Better than competitors.
 Entertainment? Better.
 Activities? Better. Not dramatically better, but better enough.
 76% satisfaction versus someone else’s 74%. They we number one, and everyone felt good about that.

But there was a disconnect no one wanted to say out loud: If the brand was winning, why were things slowing down?

After all, the data was sound. But in reality, it mad us complacent. Because when numbers confirm what you already believe, you stop asking harder questions. And the cruise industry was asking the wrong ones. They were obsessing over relative performance in a category that was growing slower than expected. Being “better than the other cruise lines” doesn’t matter much if fewer people want to cruise.

That distinction between brand preference and category relevance changed everything.

The Question No One Was Asking

Most cruise advertising at the time shared the same unspoken logic:

My cruise line is better than your cruise line. Better food. Better shows. Better cabins. Better ships. But buried in a separate industry study was a question that stopped me cold: Do you consider a cruise a regular vacation—or a special, someday vacation? That answer explained everything.

For most non-cruisers, cruising wasn’t a “next vacation” option. It was a someday idea. A once-in-a-lifetime novelty. Something you might do for a big anniversary, not instead of the beach, the resort, or the theme park.

And that meant the industry had already harvested most of the low-hanging fruit, the people inclined to try cruising, swayed by the marketing at that time. Growth slowed not because cruise lines failed, but because the category had boxed itself in.

We were the first to realize our competition wasn’t other cruise lines, it was the ease and familiarity with every other vacation option. And no one was talking about that.

Letting the Data Speak Plainly

Here’s the thing: the data was never lying. But it was being interpreted defensively. Research firms kept measuring attributes - food, entertainment, activities - because that’s what the category had always measured. No one was comparing cruising to resorts, road trips, theme parks, or international travel. The frame was too narrow.

Strategy doesn’t come from what the data says.
 It comes from how you choose to listen.

Once we stopped trying to prove Royal Caribbean was better than other cruise lines, and instead asked whether cruising itself was relevant as a vacation, the answers became obvious. Cruising had to stop feeling unfamiliar. 
It had to stop advertising the very things people were afraid of, or turned off by. 
It had to feel like a vacation first, with benefits no land-based vacation could match.

That meant changing more than messaging. It meant changing language. Familiar words remove friction. 
Familiar frames create permission.

Passengers became guests.

Cabins became rooms.

Cruises became cruise vacations.

When Strategy Moves Beyond Marketing

If cruising was a vacation, not a novelty, then ships couldn’t just be transportation. They had to be destinations. That insight directly influenced ship design: larger ships, radically re-imagined public spaces, experiences that mirrored (and exceeded) land-based resorts. Rock climbing walls. Ice skating rinks. Family zones segmented by age. Onboard experiences that felt intuitive, not forced. This wasn’t creative flourish. It was strategic consequence.

When the CEO had fifteen minutes to convince the board to approve billion-dollar ship investments, the argument wasn’t emotional. It was logical. The strategy had a spine. And it worked. Cruise ships became floating destinations. Repeat rates climbed. The cruise vacation pie grew as competitors followed.

Cruising didn’t win because it shouted louder. It won because it redefined what it was competing for.

Why Experience Matters More Than Process

This story sticks with me because it was the first time I realized I was seeing something others weren’t, not because I was smarter, but because I had enough context to recognize the pattern. Experience isn’t instinct.
 It’s pattern recognition under pressure.

You can learn strategy frameworks. You can follow research protocols. But without having lived through outcomes of wins, losses and unintended consequences, you tend to stay close to the tracks. You optimize instead of reframe.

Experience doesn’t eliminate risk. It removes false confidence. It allows you to make the leap when the data won’t explicitly tell you to. No dataset ever says, “Change the category.” That leap always feels uncomfortable.
 And it always looks obvious in hindsight.

The Real Lesson

I still believe deeply in research. I just don’t believe it should be treated like scripture. Data doesn’t create strategy.
 It reveals opportunity if you’re willing to hear it without imposing your own narrative. Most organizations don’t struggle because they lack data.
They struggle because they’re using it to defend where they already are.

The moment you stop trying to prove your point, and understand what the data really says, the truth becomes hard to ignore.