Director, AI Experience Platform

Director, AI Experience Platform

We are a global leader in vacation and travel, with brands including Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, and Silversea Cruises. Our group is dedicated to turning the vacation of a lifetime into a lifetime of vacations for guests.

The Global E-Commerce Team has an exciting full‑time Director, AI Experience Platform role reporting to the Senior Director, Digital Product. The position is onsite and based in Miramar, Florida, and is not eligible for work‑authorization sponsorship.

Position Summary

Travelers visit 277 web pages before booking a trip, cross‑referencing prices on six platforms, and often escalating to contact centers for simple changes. The $1.7 trillion travel industry runs on friction. Royal Caribbean Group is building a conversational AI to collapse all channels into a single, coherent relationship between guest and brand, across website, app, SMS, and ship.

Today the ecosystem is built for the world's largest cruise fleet. The ambition extends to a guest base spanning the full travel and hospitality ecosystem, with the addressable market being “travel” rather than “cruise AI.” This role leads the product vision for that future, guiding three strategic tracks: integrating what exists, building what doesn’t, and expanding into adjacent markets.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the multi‑year product vision across three strategic tracks: current capability adoption, new capability creation, and travel ecosystem expansion.
• Define vacation planning in three to five years and set the innovation agenda to get there before competitors do.
• Define the strategic roadmap for the product’s evolution beyond cruises into the broader travel and hospitality ecosystem.
• Identify and place strategic bets on emerging AI capabilities, testing them in controlled environments before full investment.
• Identify and evaluate strategic partnerships with travel technology providers, distribution platforms, and AI companies that accelerate the platform’s reach into adjacent markets.
• Monitor the competitive landscape across AI‑native travel platforms, incumbent digital transformations, and emerging distribution models.
• Translate competitive intelligence into strategic positioning.
• Manage and mentor a team of 2 Senior Product Managers (Capability Adoption, Capability Expansion) and 1 Senior Product Analyst.
• Own the aggregate outcomes of capability adoption and expansion through the Senior Product Managers, ensuring measurable progress.
• Set clear objectives for each team member aligned to their strategic track, and create an environment where all three tracks inform each other.
• Develop product talent through coaching, growth opportunities, and enterprise‑level strategic thinking exposure.
• Build a team culture that balances operational rigor with creative ambition.
• Plan for team growth as the initiative scales.
• Define the organizational structure needed to support the multi‑brand, multi‑segment ambition.

Enterprise Alignment & Executive Engagement

• Serve as the primary product voice for the AI initiative with executive leadership, including brand presidents, CDO, CMOs, and the CEO.
• Develop and present the multi‑year enterprise capital investment case, including scope, sequencing, cost, and projected returns.
• Participate in and shape the product scope framework: defining what the core platform owns, what depends on shared enterprise services, and where adjacent initiatives begin.
• Lead cross‑functional working groups spanning business value, technology, and design, aligning teams on priorities and tradeoffs.
• Translate the innovation vision and AI capabilities into language that resonates with financial, operational, and brand audiences.
• Confirm the platform architecture supports the full ambition: multi‑brand, multi‑channel, multi‑market, and eventually multi‑segment (cruise, hotel, destination, river).
• Drive the strategy for the product as the proactive intelligence layer across the enterprise, embedded in every guest‑facing and crew‑facing surface.
• Define success metrics from operational performance (capability coverage, task completion, deflection rates) to strategic outcomes (TAM expansion, partnership revenue, guest lifetime value).
• Own the product narrative as a category‑defining innovation: how the story is told internally to drive momentum and externally to attract talent, partners, and industry recognition.

Qualifications and Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; MBA or equivalent graduate degree preferred.
• 10+ years of product management experience, with at least 3 years in a leadership or director‑level capacity managing product managers.
• Experience building or scaling platform products with ecosystem or marketplace ambitions.
• Proven ability to form and execute strategic partnerships with technology companies, distribution platforms, or industry partners.
• Deep understanding of AI/ML product strategy, including conversational AI, agentic systems, recommendation engines, or personalization platforms.
• Experience developing multi‑year investment cases (business cases, board presentations) that secured significant capital allocation.
• Strong people leadership: track record of hiring, developing, and retaining high‑performing product talent.
• Comfort operating at both the C‑suite strategic level and sprint execution level.
• Track record of building products in categories that didn’t previously exist, or defining new market segments within established industries.
• History of identifying and executing strategic bets with incomplete information.
• Able to navigate the organizational complexity of an enterprise initiative that spans multiple brand leadership teams and formal governance structures within a publicly traded company.
• Comfort operating where no playbook exists.
• Experience in travel, hospitality, or large‑scale consumer platforms strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with competitive dynamics in AI‑native platforms, digital travel, or enterprise AI transformation.
• Exceptional communication skills: can make a complex AI strategy clear to a non‑technical executive audience.

Financial and Quantitative Responsibilities

• Own the development and defense of the multi‑year enterprise CAR, covering all three capability horizons.
• Manage the product team budget, including headcount, tooling, and vendor relationships.
• Define and track financial metrics: revenue influenced by platform capabilities, cost avoidance through contact center deflection, and incremental revenue from new capability types.
• Model TAM expansion scenarios as the product extends into adjacent travel segments.

It is the policy of the Company to ensure equal employment and promotion opportunity to qualified candidates without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, sexuality, gender identity or expression, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Royal Caribbean Group and each of its subsidiaries prohibit and will not tolerate discrimination or harassment.