On June 18, 2025, Carnival Cruise Line announced the sunset of their popular Very Important Fun Person (VIFP) loyalty club. Replacing the program will be the new Carnival Rewards launching June 1, 2026. The website and social media posts highlight happy, smiling cruisers; however, the response from loyal guests has been anything but joyful. The case study When Change Management Goes Wrong: Carnival Cruise Line looks into what happened and what went wrong.
When Change Management Goes Wrong: Carnival Cruise Line was originally published on Mark’s LinkedIn Account on June 20, 2025. If you’d like to keep up-to-date on all things related to the cruise industry, head on over to our This Cruise Life YouTube channel for even more!
Carnival’s Current Program
Carnival has hinted at a need to make changes to their VIFP loyalty program for years now. More people than ever have discovered the tremendous value a cruise vacation provides compared to land-based travel. As a result, the cruise industry has seen significant growth and Carnival has seen their loyalty program balloon in numbers. In fact, with the number of cruisers that have reached the top status levels of the VIFP program, Carnival has not been able to deliver the promised perks for some time. Change was necessary and everyone knew it. Enter Carnival Rewards.
Carnival Rewards
With splashy graphics and fun videos, Carnival Cruise Line announced brand-new Carnival Rewards across all of their social media platforms. Their Brand Ambassador spoke to the new program on Facebook, and a dedicated new website was launched.
The website had everything you would expect: details on the earning process, the various status levels included in the new program, the perks cruisers could expect to receive, and a detailed Frequently Asked Questions document.
As cruisers dug in, they found that Carnival Rewards is a lot more complex than the current program. Today, you simply earn one VIFP point for every day you sail. Earn enough VIFP points and reach one of the 5 status levels and its associated perks. The point-per-day approach is used by many cruise lines as it recognizes and rewards those who give their business to the brand on a recurring basis.
In the new program, cruisers now earn stars toward their loyalty. Every dollar spent earns 3 stars. Additionally, there’s a points component where every dollar spent earns you 3 points. Plus, casino spend also earns you points. And, while the details haven’t yet been released, Carnival promises that the Carnival Mastercard will have a stronger tie to Carnival Rewards allowing you to earn points via external spend.
Instead of simply earning a VIFP point for every day sailed, cruisers now receive a combination of stars and points – at various multiples between 1x-3x. Add on the fact that stars and points are used for different things and it starts to get a bit confusing (stars tie to loyalty level, points can be redeemed for products and services).
The biggest change with Carnival Rewards, however, is the elimination of lifetime earned status. Cruisers that spent years working toward top tiers in Carnival’s VIFP loyalty program found out, via a splashy website, that their status was suddenly going to expire.
The reaction was swift.
Carnival Rewards Controversy
Within an hour of the new website going live, loyal Carnival cruisers took to social media to express their disappointment. Cruise message boards, Facebook groups, and even Carnival’s own social media posts were inundated with posts from upset cruisers.
- “The one main thing Carnival accomplished today was giving arguably thousands of long-time Carnival cruisers a reason to shop around.”
- “I’m out! Moving my entire family to Royal [Caribbean] to start over. Carnival has shown us they don’t care about loyalty.”
- “What other business do you know that says ‘whoa wait a minute, we have too many loyal customers. We better do something to change that.”’
There are quite literally tens of thousands of posts and reactions on the Carnival Brand Ambassador’s Facebook page alone. There was so much negative reaction, Brand Ambassador John Heald posted three separate videos the day following the Carnival Rewards announcement. In one, he shared that it’s still a year before implementation and things could possibly still change. In another, he tried to paint Carnival the victim saying that some cruisers had resorted to name calling and were saying some not-very-nice things. The third video, he finally shared that he wouldn’t be discussing the new program for a while. Instead, he’d be focusing on other news and things that needed to be discussed.
In the span of 24 hours, the world’s largest cruise operator seemed to have literally pissed off the internet.
So what went wrong?
Having worked on large program rollouts my entire career, I’ve seen my share of “awesome ideas” that land with a thud. Carnival Rewards seems to have hit the ground so hard that the cruise line will be digging out of the crater created for months (if not years) to come.
With something as big as Carnival Rewards, I can confidently say dozens of employees were involved. Senior leaders would have reviewed the program structure, financial numbers, and implementation plans. Carnival may have even paid some fancy consultants to help build the new program. How could all of these well-meaning people create a program that missed the mark so badly?
While only those inside Carnival’s walls know for sure, it appears that those in charge failed to account for the people side of change.
A Lesson in Change Management
Wearing my “consultant hat,” there are many questions I’d love to ask the project team and leaders at Carnival HQ.
The solution they’ve built is clearly robust and offers some industry firsts. While it’s more complex than the current program, that’s something easily overcome with technology and clear communication.
Question #1: Stakeholder Management
What stakeholders were involved in the creation of Carnival Rewards? How many cruisers from the top tiers of the current loyalty program were involved? What was their reaction to losing status they’ve worked a lifetime to earn?
Carnival likely included cruisers in the build of the program, but based on the reaction, it’s clear they weren’t the right ones or there weren’t enough of them.
Question #2: Test and Refine
To avoid groupthink of the project team and working group of stakeholders, how did Carnival bring the concepts of Carnival Rewards out to a larger audience to test and refine?
If they did test and refine, I’m curious what feedback they heard through the process. I’m also curious what tweaks they made. Or, was the team so in love with the solution there was no refine and they simply built negative feedback into the FAQs?
It does appear that Carnival knew that people would perceive loss as one of the questions is: “won’t some guests feel like you’re taking away something that they worked hard to attain?” The response, however, leaves a lot to be desired from a change management perspective: “Some very well might, but the program is designed to allow guests to maintain their status if they choose…”
To me, that answer reads as, “Yeah, we know folks are going to be upset. Oh well.”
Question #3: Implementation Planning
While I appreciate the fact that Carnival announced Carnival Rewards nearly a full year before it goes live, I have questions. Why did the teams decide to roll out every single component of the program at the exact same time?
By launching everything in a “big bang,” cruisers became overwhelmed by the sheer amount of change. Just navigating the Carnival Rewards website gives the user a headache!
Instead of earning VIFP points per day, cruisers now earn 3 stars per dollar. Plus they’re earning 3 points per dollar. Plus there’s a casino conversion to points. If that wasn’t confusing enough, there’s now also a redemption portal where you use your points. Plus there are changes to loyalty levels. And there are beloved perks being removed from the loyalty levels. Plus, plus, plus…
Considering this was shared a year before going live, I’d love to know why Carnival didn’t break the rollout into pieces to help cruisers digest the information? Start with the change to how you earn points and the updated levels. Once cruisers have had a chance to digest and react to that, share the adjustments to the perks being offered at each level. Then, after the dust settles, announce the exciting new Rewards Points currency that makes sailing with Carnival even more rewarding.
Question #4: Communication Planning
This one goes hand-in-hand with Implementation Planning. I’d love to know how Carnival decided to just launch a website and post to social media – especially considering all of the changes being rolled out?
Carnival has talked about needing to make changes to the VIFP loyalty program for years. Yet in that time, they’ve never mentioned anything that would even hint at loyalty status expiring. As a result, most cruisers expected the brand to add some new levels and shift perks around.
Knowing this, why wasn’t there communication leading up to the launch of Carnival Rewards? There was a sole photo post on Instagram the night before the program was announced that simply said, “Cruising is about to get more rewarding.”
And then, just like that, a website was launched and Heald posted a message on Facebook to go check it out. Why didn’t the brand think about communicating with loyal cruisers first? Travel agents? Influencers? There were so many additional communication opportunities that could have helped. All of them were simply missed.
Damage Control
Not 24 hours after launching the new program, Carnival’s Brand Ambassador took to Facebook stating that he heard the feedback. Without committing to anything, he reminded cruisers that nothing would be implemented for almost a full year and that changes could still be made to the program before that time. In total, he recorded / hosted 3 separate videos the day after launch alone. There were also multiple reports of Carnival’s social media team hiding replies from disappointed cruisers.
Wrap Up
It’s clear Carnival knows they’ve got a problem on their hands. Reacting and responding in a timely manner is going to be critical. By not managing the people side of this change, there’s a risk that all the work and money spent on building Carnival Rewards will not return the expected results. Worst case, Carnival has to go back to the drawing board altogether.
Some have already labeled Carnival Rewards the “New Coke.” As both a change management professional and, more importantly, a loyal Diamond cruiser with almost 450 nights sailed on Carnival Cruise Line, I’ll be anxiously watching to see what happens next.
What do you think about the new Carnival Rewards Program? Drop a comment to let me know what you think!