Talking Points: Stein Kruse

Since Stein Kruse joined Holland America Line in 1999, the company has undergone an aggressive expansion, adding nine ships to create a fleet of 15, including the $650 million New Amsterdam delivered in July. He has also presided over a new $525 million program to upgrade older ships.

A World Class City: I was born in Oslo, Norway. Twenty years ago, they decided to solve transportation gridlock by putting all their roads underground and it’s beautiful. Vancouver has also revitalized their downtown harborfront area with sea walks, parks, hotels, restaurants and green space. We [in Seattle] have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take down a dangerous eyesore [the Alaskan Way Viaduct] and put it underground to create living, park and retail space for this and future generations. It’s just a short piece of road, but the decision doesn’t go anywhere. There seems to be complete apathy about getting things done. To me it’s sad.

Parent Company: Carnival owns several brands, including Princess Cruises and Holland America. We manage our company pretty autonomously, focusing on quality, service level and incredible destinations. Nobody comes close to us in terms of the number of ports we go to and the breadth of our offerings, from overnight cruises to ones that last 114 days. We have our own schools for our service staff and for our chefs in Indonesia and the Philippines. Our cadets come from Dutch and British maritime colleges.

Recession Impact:  Hotels have down seasons and up seasons. But if markets are weak, we [lower] prices to keep the ships full. With cruises, you’ve gotten a lot of value for the money you paid over the past year and a half. We’ve kept cutting costs without impacting quality. When I entered the business 30 years ago, we were selling seven-day cruises for more than we are today, yet today our product is vastly superior.

Challenges: The CEO is chief worrier and chief cheerleader. My greatest concern today is the regulatory environment. An increasing regulatory framework has made our operations more complex and costly. In Alaska, they raised the head tax and added a gaming tax, environmental fees and new technology requirements. We [diverted] more ships away from the Alaska route to places in Europe. [The number of] passengers to Alaska fell 17 percent. You’ll see further decline in 2011.

Future Growth: Fortunately, the current administration [in Alaska] is different. I think they realize we are a clean business that brings happy people to the state. There are now about 770,000 people taking cruises to Alaska, down from a peak of about 1 million. We think that could rise more than 40 percent to 1.2 million.

Economic Impact: We have hundreds of vendors. We buy farm eggs, Washington wine, flowers from Skagit county, produce from Charlie’s and repair work at Todd Shipyards. The port estimates that we contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to the state economy annually through purchased goods and payroll.

Environment: We segregate every single item, whether it is paper, cardboard, plastic or food waste. Our business model is predicated on going to pristine areas and we want them to stay that way.

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