Cunard

Cunard is one of the most iconic names in luxury travel — nearly 180 years of heritage, the original transatlantic line, the byword for White Star Service. But heritage alone doesn’t win the modern luxury guest.

Global competitive pressures had pushed Cunard to invest in deep research on how the luxury sector was changing, and the answer came back as a new brand strategy grounded in celebrating the freedom of travel. Now came the hard part: getting 5,000 employees across ship and shore — 67 nationalities, every role from cabin crew to boardroom — to believe in it, feel proud of it, and deliver it consistently. The challenge was to position this as evolution, not reinvention.

We started with the commercial argument. Building the business case on the proven correlation between employee experience, customer experience, White Star Service and NPS gave the leadership team a hard reason to invest beyond the soft one. From there, we aligned leaders on the programme principles — globally synchronised, locally tailored, experiential learning with practical application — and built Our Next Chapter.

A strategic roadmap covering every audience ship and shore. Experiential launch events with fully immersive elements including meet the guests, designed to signal change, build pride and translate values into behaviours.

Then the embedding work: aligning EX and CX so the moments that matter to colleagues match the moments that matter to guests, building guest universal truths and masterclasses into how decisions get made, and reimagining the White Star Service Academy and recognition programme so the new behaviours got rewarded daily.