Join host Ken Taylor as he sits down with industry expert Darragh McGillicuddy, Founder of  McGillicuddy Hospitality as they reminisce over lessons learnt from the hotel industry and their roles in shaping drinking & dining experiences at sea. Offering insight into the impact of F&B on passenger experience onboard and how clarity in brand standards and service excellence contribute to guest satisfaction and loyalty.

In particular, Darragh highlights the unique challenges and opportunities of small ship F&B programmes and culinary teams, and the crucial role that onboard crew play. The pair discuss leadership programmes and team culture, and the invaluable role these can play in maintaining gold standards and brand quality.

Tune in for behind-the-scenes anecdotes and practical advice for setting cruise F&B teams up for success and service excellence.

Welcome to eat drink cruise, a podcast that supports and is really solely focused on the amazing food and beverage experiences it see across all the cruise lines in the industry and the people that really make it happen. CLIA the industry's cruise lines Association recently said they expect 12% growth of passengers cruising in 2024. That's 4 million new cruisers cruising on cruise ships this year, which is really quite amazing. So why do people take cruises? Well, for me and foremost, I believe it's the incredible dining and beverage that you can experience onboard. So we talk to the interesting people that make it happen and all the behind the scenes stories you get with that? Tune in weekly to eat drink cruise, a podcast that I host, my name is Ken Taylor, and welcome to the show. Well, welcome to the show. My name is Ken Taylor with MarkeTeam. And here is another episode of our podcast, eat drink cruise. And it's been a fun ride. So far, if you're listening and continuing to listen, we bring on some really interesting people that have contributed to the cruise industry. And people who have really put themselves in such a place that most people know what they've done, or they've worked with them, or they've heard of the impact that they've had in the business. And today's guest is Darragh McGillicuddy. With McGillicuddy

right. So when I met you, you're you're Irish, right?

Today, you live in Cape Town, South Africa. So when you're consulting, it's a bit of a commute?

No, because there's not a lot of cruisers out of Cape Town.

Is that Is that correct?

Yes I can. So that's, that's absolutely correct. We this time of year, we're seeing an awful lot of ships pass through. And that's because of the Red Sea conflict, all ships are moving around South Africa this year. So it's a great opportunity for me to do some ship visits, some of our clients have ships passing through here. So that's been that's been useful, saving me some commuting time. But also, we work with a lot of brands that have a European presence or are headquartered in Europe. And because we share the same time zone as Central Europe, it's, it's very useful, we wake up and start our workday at the same time as them. And one of perhaps the few blessings out of COVID is we've learned to work online very effectively. And so that's allowed us to be able to run the business from here.

Absolutely. You definitely built a consulting business, we're going to talk a little bit about kind of your angle in I know you as a service guru, a managing culture, expert in the business and so that those will be some fun things we'll touch on. I just want to go back to McGillicuddy

we will get into some of the history. But ISIS a famous name, I mean, McGillicuddy

I mentioned this because everybody's name has history. But in Ireland, it's quite a bit different. I mean, I'm imagining if you are traveling, you're going to the airport. You're about to take an air Lingus flight, maybe they call your name, and maybe you got upgraded and then they'll say Dara McGillicuddy please approach the counter, do people go hmm, McGillicuddy very interesting. Is it still important to know your name and where you're from in Ireland? Is that a still a?

Absolutely so so McGillicuddy is it you know, it's a it's a name known to Irish people. In fact, the largest mountain range in Ireland are known as the macgillycuddy reeks. And it's a name I'm very proud of. I made the decision early on that with a name like mine, I'm either going to use it and call my business after it or you know, try and drop it or make less of it. And I'm very proud of my name very proud of my Irish heritage. So the choice was easy, but I will tell you, early in my career, in my hotel days, I worked for Ritz Carlton in the United States. And as a front office manager, I used to often check people in and they would look at my nametag and say, Oh, wow. McGillicuddy is that your real name? I would say yes, it is. Thank you very much. And then they would ask me if I was related to Lucille McGillicuddy. And if you remember Lucille Ball's maiden name stage maiden name was was Lucille McGillicuddy

. So after a while as I got tired of being asked that I used to say absolutely she was my grandmother, and people were just runwith that, they would say, Wow, that's amazing. So, so yeah, it's what you do with your name, right.

And then especially where you're from and where you grew up. That's an important name and hospitality. We'll touch on that in a second. You're currently working obviously, with a number of different brands. You have centered a bit on the cruise industry, because that's where your background outside of hospitality from the hotel industry, you had quite an impact in cruise, and you've picked up some nice clients. Viking Cruises is one that you spend a lot of your time with your team spends time with. And you know Viking for North American guests who looked for cruising, it's it's certainly one you see a great deal of marketing around lately. I would call it almost asleep or not so much that they haven't done anything great because the cruises look phenomenal. And they're doing a lot lot more I think I think there's what 13 going on 14 ships as the footprint is growing, the impact that they're having in the industry. Tell me a little bit about what you're doing with Viking.

Absolutely. So Viking have been partners of ours now where we've been partners of Viking, I should say, for coming up on 10 years, we were first approached when the ocean project, as we called it back then was just beginning. And I was asked to see if I could help create some service standards for Viking as they embarked on the project. One thing led to another we built a service program that became the brand's service program across all 92 ships now. Sorry, 94 ships, so they have 82 river ships and then 12 expedition or ocean ships. I think it's sorry, 11 Ocean ships and two expedition ships. So the number is quickly approaching 100 ships as they have many more ships on order. Wow. Yeah. So that's just amazing. Yeah. And it was a fabulous journey. You know, the very idea of starting an ocean brand doesn't happen very often. This is a very capital intensive business, you don't get many new entrants to the market, that often, the company is run by a remarkable gentleman, Torsten Haugen, and he was, he was kind of told, You're not going to be able to do this, you're not gonna be able to build this ship. And if you're not, if you're able to build it, you're not going to be able to prove it. And if you're able to prove it, you're not going to be able to operate it. And he loves a challenge. He loves to be told he can't do something because it's, it's hold my beer moment, right. And he just goes, he goes with it. And we were incredibly proud to be part of what ended up being a very successful startup with a very talented team. We, you know, the Viking were awarded best cruise line in the world in the small ship sector, in their first year of operation, stealing that honor from Crystal Cruises, who had heard and held that honor for many years, and have continued to win that award year after year. In fact, last year, both Conde Nast and travel and leisure recognized all three of their product lines, so ocean expedition and river

as the number one in the world. And so that's just speaks to the quality of what that brand is putting out the quality of experience on board, the credible hardware, you know, it's been an incredible success story. You may know that they actually had an IPO just over two weeks ago on the first of May. They're now trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Yeah. So. So it's been an incredible journey for them.

Well, great products usually come from people that are told they can't do it. Right. Not only in cruise most great industries. And thanks for clarifying. So expedition, ocean and river. I think a lot of people think of Viking as great river experiences, certainly a lot of product even in the United States. The Mississippi has a pretty big is that the largest one on the Mississippi.

That's right. So that's a relatively new entrant to that market. But quickly having great success.

They have US crew?

Exactly. So that's the Jones Act. Ship, of course it has it's a US base ship has to be built in the US has to be owned by a US entity and operated by a US crew. And so that's been, of course, a learning curve of learning how to manage a ship with a US workforce. We've made great, great headway there great strides and are starting to see some nice consistency with that product as well.

That's awesome. And then more recently, McGillicuddy iconic brand. We've had at least a seven year MarkeTeam has been with Princess six, seven years now as a as a client, on the beverage and development side, which is they've just been great to work with. Tell me what you're doing because I think you were just in Fairbanks, Alaska. So what's happening with Princess these days?

That's right. So, for instance, have approached us to help build a leadership program for them. And that's something we've been working on now for about 18 months that finally saw the light of day quite recently where we piloted that program with Princess lodges which those are six lodges in Alaska that they own and operate as pre and post experiences for their guests, obviously related to the Alaska cruises. So we were able to go to Fairbanks where we brought the entire leadership teams from all of those lodges together in their kind of preseason preopening timeframe, and rolled out this program to an incredible response. So now we're busy talking with Frances about global deployment of that program in the coming months. So it's been, it's been very interesting. They're a great brand, they're very different to Viking, of course, they play in a different sector. But they have had this incredible brand evolution recently, with the introduction of their first of their spirit Class ships, that's the sun Princess, which came into operation only in the last two months. And that's really demonstrating where the brand is moving to, kind of being respectful for the heritage of the brand, and the history and the Love Boat, but also recognizing the need to innovate and evolve, as the industry does. So, so quite exciting to see what's happening with them right now.

And a lot of the cruise lines are doing that. And it's always a difficult thing to do. When you consider the development pipeline that each of the cruise lines have, you know, embarked on. So you're trying to reorganize yourself, in some cases, you know, create a an environment that will allow for innovation, both in the way people are managed, can be managed opportunities to manage and then of course, you've got new ships coming along, which causes everyone to just run to the ship and forget about all their responsibilities back at the desk. Wait a second, didn't we just meet with a group that told us to do this? And now we're doing that? Right, right. We know that challenge back having worked at Royal Caribbean, but I think it's something that all of the operators face, which is interesting. But you mentioned you were in Fairbanks, Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska, and you live in Cape Town, what's the travel like there? Seems like those are pretty far apart.

So I will tell you before I booked the travel for this trip, I Googled What's the furthest place on planet Earth from Fairbanks, Alaska. And interestingly, Cape Town was number three on the list. But just off the coast from here was Durban was number one on the list. So I knew it was quite a long ways to go almost the other side of the of the of the planet from where we are. But I've been very used to traveling for a very long time. Even in my hotel days, I used to do hotel openings that took me to places like Shanghai, New Orleans, Philadelphia, all over the US. So travel is of course, part and parcel of what we do in this industry in the hospitality industry. And when your business units move every night, when your ships move every night, inevitably, you gotta keep moving to keep up with it. So now I've been a cruise now for 23 years, since 2001. In addition to of course, my hospitality background, so I've spent quite a bit of time on the road, I find that time in airplanes is often my most productive time because I am disconnected from the rest of the world. And I'm able to focus and get some of my deep work done there, which I enjoy. So. So yeah, but lots of time getting to Fairbanks for sure.

You taught me how to travel actually. And I remember I came from the hotel industry just like you. I was with one luxury brand, as you mentioned the other and joined the industry and for you joined in 2001, as you mentioned, and you sort of ran the dining and you were part of the Guest Services team, I think is what it was. And the organization back then really didn't have a food and beverage department, they certainly did on board but in the office, it really wasn't a traditional food and beverage department. So you and I kind of helped create that obviously, with Frank Weber who was working in the office of whom we work for. And so but back then, I mean I never went to ships you taught me how to pack you taught me how to get my clothes organized onboard the ship how much to take for a trip how to get on and off the ship. This is if you work in a corporate office in the cruise industry you must have learned how to get on and off the ship this is a talent of you still get the practice that so that's great. Any new tricks I should know because you know it's it's it's not an easy thing to learn. I've never done it before.

I pride myself on being able to do you know a seven night trip with carry on only that's that's a life skill. And that's that's including suits and shirts and I've got a trick about how I hang things in the bathroom and run the shower to steam everything so it looks like it's been freshly..

You taught me the shower. Yeah, you taught me the shower trick and my wife and I when we recently cruise, she's like, What are you doing? And I'm like, it only takes a few minutes. It's not gonna hurt anybody. Plus, I can stand in there and get a little spa treatment while I'm at it exactly. In your time with Royal Caribbean. You were there for how many years?

I worked at Royal Caribbean seven years from 2001 to 2008.

Okay, and so you moved on I moved up thank you very much for that opportunity. But I wouldn't been able to do it with all of your without all of your preparation. A lot of the work that you focused on in your later years with the brand was brand quality. But going back to some of the earlier years you had helped developed gold and Your standards, I think you were behind that, were you.

I was part of a team a small but, you know, very, very effective team. Jessica Korea deserves a mention here because she was my partner in crime on our project. And yeah, it was, it was a very exciting project. It was a time when Royal Caribbean was about to experience explosive growth, really, I think we were 11 ships, but there were suddenly you know, the voyager class ship, new builds are being delivered quite quickly, the radiants class deliveries happened, we were starting to work on what was quite an oasis class, the Oasis project at the time. And you know, so it was a very exciting time. But I think what the team recognized was, we need to be careful to capture what has got us to this point, and kind of make sure we're very clear about what our brand promises to our guests so that we can onboard and train the 1000s of crew that we would need to bring into the organization effectively. And interestingly, that's that's a big part of the business I run today is, is helping brands get really clear on what their brand promise is, and ensuring that every single crew member, every single team member understands how they can contribute to that I use the analogy sometimes have, you know, John F. Kennedy famously walked into a building at NASA once and there was a janitor mopping the floor. And he said, What's your job, and the janitor said, I'm helping put a man on the moon, because that was the mission at the time. And he understood how his role as the janitor was contributing towards the greater organizational goal. So in a similar way, we what we try to do is make sure that every brand is crystal clear on their brand promise. And then we find ways to activate team members around how are they going to deliver on that brand promise. And that's in practical training sessions practical ways, so that a housekeeper knows what that looks like in their area, a waiter knows what it looks like a bartender, utility cleaner, every single position on

board understands how they contribute to what the brand is trying to achieve. And once you have that everybody kind of going rowing in the same direction so to speak, it can be very powerful, suddenly, you can find that, that you see a direct impact to things like net promoter scores and to get satisfaction ratings.

Would you say there that while working with Royal Caribbean, maybe your legacy, I think identifying a legacy with your time at any, in any places is not a bad thing? Right? Would you say your legacy is probably that brand promise. In your last role? You were brand quality director and you obviously needed to inspect that that was the methodology back then to really assess and understand where is the brand going from an execution standpoint onboard? All of the cruise ships? Would you say that was would be your legacy from with?

Well, I don't know that I could claim it as my legacy, it would be a little bit overstating things, but I certainly like to feel like I shape the quality of it.

Maybe that's better said I, if I think back on my time with Royal Caribbean, with my team, we created my time dining, it was the first flex model that the industry ever saw, or, or sort of reengineered the dining experience to be really a business. And so we renamed a restaurant operations, but certainly didn't do that alone. Many of those amazing people are still working with the cruise line today. But you had an impact. That was your that was your passion. And what was interesting, as you decided, you know, about seven years in as you mentioned it take this on the road to do this for yourself. Was that a hard decision to make? Because you were doing your?

Yeah, of course, to leave a corporate role was a lot of responsibility and start on the entrepreneurial path is not a decision you take lightly. But I was at a point in my career where I had spent a lot I'd studied hotel management, I grew up in a family hotel business back home. I've been in hotels, my literally my whole life from kind of age nine or 10. You know, it was certainly what shaped me and for me, my time at Royal Caribbean helped me appreciate the complexity of the cruise industry, but also gave me an acute understanding of how do you unlock talent and a shipboard team whether it's the leadership team or the crew, how do you get them working together in harmony? How do you achieve this great success and it's you know, it's not for the faint hearted working on ships is it's an endurance sport. It's a marathon, not a sprint, you know, these crew members are sometimes working six plus months at a time. And you know, your task is to get them to wake up every morning and smile and greet the guests engage with the guests, make that guest feel seen and heard as an individual and not treat them like customer number 25,000 this contract, and that's not easily done. So. So we feel like we've understood that well enough that we can now help brands do better in those spaces and achieve achieve more consistency and so on. You know, you mentioned the brand quality job. It was interesting. It was a position. I remember Michael Bailey asking me to do this and I said I'll do it but for a year because it was quite a lonely job. I was traveling constantly on my own as almost a mystery shopper For the first three days, and it would be fun to walk around the ship and try to avoid being spotted. But of course, that was just a matter of time before. Eventually I was spotted in the cover was blown. But what was what was what was fascinating for me was By day three, I kind of had gathered enough observations and seen enough of the guest

experience to be able to then engage with the leadership team and say, here's what I'm seeing what tell me what you're doing about these things, and really work together with them, I found that really exciting and motivating to be able to partner with the support team and say, let's figure out how to solve these problems together, let's figure out how to help you improve in these areas, which was quite a while.

And that may have been what kind of helped you think about moving moving on, really, because when I remember back on those meetings that you would have most of the shipboard leadership team would actually look forward to the debrief. Because I think the way you approached it was less of an auditor and more of a development coach, in the sense that, here's what we're seeing, let's help you understand those and then let's work on what we can do to accomplish. So essentially, they were getting a good coaching support session. And I think that really symbolized the way corporate offices in the cruise industry probably could excel, right, versus handing out you know, expectations and not really being there to support them. It's one thing to audit but it's another thing to support. And there's two different roles of you combine them while you were doing that job. And I think a lot of the from my recollection, a lot of the leaders really appreciated that. And you always get a little bit of afraid when the audits on board, but then you're like, oh, wait a second. It's Dara. He's gonna, he's gonna help me. Help me figure this out. You mentioned Ritz Carlton that obviously shaped some of the service culture for you. You were a rooms exec in Buckhead, which was at the time a flagship property for Ritz Carlton hotels. Clearly a good guy to bring into the cruise industry with what was happening and needed to happen. But you were able to do that role. Because you, you come from, as you mentioned earlier, this amazing service background. I mean, you've really started this back when you were little working for your dad and you and your brother Patrick, you know, probably ran the hotel as little kids. So the hotel is barely Gary House. That's right. Is that correct? Pronunciation? Yeah. And the exact location again, because I've been there but I don't want to mess it up.

That's right. No, that's that's fine. It's in a place a beautiful place called trilling in County Kerry that's in the southwest of Ireland. The province of Munster, quite close to Killarney, which a lot of Americans are familiar with as a major tourist destination or the Dingle Peninsula, for that matter, just south of the cliffs of more. My grandfather started that hotel 70 plus years ago now, and my dad ran that hotel. And because of that, we of course, grew up, you know, doing odd jobs around the hotel, cutting the grass, collecting glasses, we learned at a very early age that if you see a rental car polling, and back in those days hurts us to have the number one sticker in the back window. And we learned that, you know, those are probably American guests. And if you just take their suitcases and bring them inside, for some reason, they give you cash, they put cash in your hand, we were like, This is phenomenal, because tipping was not part of our culture in Ireland maybe still isn't. So we quickly learned that that's a way to make some fast bucks. So whatever you were doing, you dropped everything when you saw a rental car pull in and you know, but if I think a bit today as a guest experience here was this youngster coming in grabbing the suitcases out of the trunk of the car and and getting them up to your room. It was a great way to make money as a 1011 12 year old kid. So but obviously, you know, formative in my career a big a big part of shaping how I work. My work ethic came from that verse certainly. And you know, the beginning of what what I didn't realize was to be a lifelong passion around hospitality and service for sure. Yeah.

That's amazing. And so today the hotel is in in this is never just like a lodge for anyone to to have has an interest really, really an upscale property and it always probably has been I know it's expanded a little bit and well known in not only the region but in Ireland. For the spa wasn't is this Postel really recognized?

Yeah, so under under my so my brother Patrik runs the hotel today and under his leadership, he's really taken it to another level he's he's added the spa which is called no door. That's the Irish for nature. It's an award winning spa. So that's now just coming up on just celebrated nine years in operation. Belly Gary was was 16 rooms, small country house hotel when we were growing up. Today, it's 64 rooms and suites. And recently, my brother has acquired all of the land that surrounds the property, and it's now become the estate at bellegarrigue. So it's really become a destination unto itself. He's built. He's rewilding the land so he's returning the land from farmland back to its natural habitat, or natural form. There's a major sustainability focus he's he's effectively now got At the hotel to where it's carbon neutral in terms of its footprint. So it's very exciting to see the development of this. And he's really you know, the the hotel is there a 930 hotels in Ireland and valley, Gary has been in the top 10 on TripAdvisor for the last five, six years now. So it's punching well above its weight, something I'm incredibly proud of, of course, as you can probably hear my voice. And yeah, so if you're going to Ireland, please stop by and say hello to my brother, Gary, for sure.

Podrick is the general manager still runs the property. I met your mother there. And she's amazing. And actually, we were supposed to go on and have a helicopter ride because he's a pilot, right? He's a helicopter pilot. He said that wasn't operating quite well enough for the day. So we're like, okay, so we wanted a great a great trip with your mom and saw so much of the countryside there, which is absolutely stunning. Any American who's gone there is blown away. But it's typically what you might see in Ireland. And we're expect and so over the years, you've developed macgillycuddy hospitality, and give us a little feel on what your sort of focuses as a as a consulting group. But really, how do you kind of organize your thoughts when someone brings you in to look at the organization?

Absolutely. So So thank you, the the business is really about developing the people behind world class brands in the hospitality space. Everything we do in the end is around people development. And that shows up in a couple of different ways we develop leadership programs for hospitality brands. We've also done that for some other brands outside of the space that are in the service industry. So we have a local client who is in a high end medical facility. And we've recently done some work for them around their brand standards, and their leadership program. So so it's something that we're learning is a transferable skill. It's not just in the hospitality space, but actually in the wider service industry. This is a critical skill set. We also I mentioned about the brand promise. So we love to build programs around your service standards that help really activate your team members, right. And by activate, I mean, give them a purpose, give them an understanding of how they contribute to the bigger picture, give them a sense of belonging, we do a couple of other things that are maybe quite unique. One is we oversee the startup of new ships. So when a ship is nearing completion, we would show up on on site at the shipyard we manage the logistics of bringing all the crew together housing them, making sure that their meals and so on while they get the ship ready. And in parallel, we train them. So we're able to then get everybody fully trained, and kind of hand that team over and the shift over to the operations team, who then a couple of weeks later will take delivery of that ship and take it into into operation. So that's an exciting project or exciting activity that we do. We've done that now for Viking 14 times. Looking forward to doing it again in November this year for their next ship where Viking villa. And again next year, the Viking vest, and so on, pipeline of new builds keeps coming. And we're we've now got that formula down to a

pretty lean operation. So we kind of have figured out over the years how to optimize that. And we enjoy doing that. That's always an exciting, very rewarding piece of work.

And you must have a crew that works with you that kind of kind of jumps on and off projects. And, you know, has done it before they stick around with you to you know, to continue the effort.

That's right, we have a I always call them a small but talented team. They're very diverse. Everybody's a little bit of a Swiss army knife, they can do multiple things. So we have one person who oversees our we ship launch responsibilities, if you will. And she manages all of those moving parts. She's a real guru with that. Her name is Heather. Yes. And then we have a learning and development team based here that build and kind of craft design and create training content that we think is really going to resonate with crew. We also have a person who manages the standard operating procedures and operations manuals. It's the tedious part of the business that brands often don't get a lot of time to do. So we help brands with that as well really writing kind of every procedure from making the bed all the way up to the brand standards of what the service experience.

So there you and I haven't had a beer again, so I should say but I don't know if we've ever had and get us together. But we haven't had a beverage together a long time we on the show have always asked our guests you know, what's their favorite cocktail? Do you have a favorite cocktail these days?

Only one. I mean, I have so many. But I will tell you I am fortunate living in Cape Town. I'm literally living amongst the cape Winelands. I drive past the vineyard dropping my kids to school in the morning. So I've come to appreciate beautiful, big red South African wines in particular, my wife and I enjoy a Bordeaux blend. And we have some world class wines here that we enjoy. We're really spoiled for choice. And of course, you can always stop by the vineyard and buy wine at a vineyard Cellar Door prices which is is hard to beat. So I would say wine is probably my go to. And a good old fashioned gin and tonic is also welcome as an aperitif before a good meal.

And I've always known as a wine guy and so that's great. There it's been such a pleasure This is a quick conversation. But I really enjoyed it. I mean, amazing guy, to work for an amazing guy to work with, I'm sure that people that get a chance to work with you, I've, I'm absolutely positive, they truly enjoy it. And if anybody would ever get a chance to work, I would highly recommend, because you are the nicest guy in the industry. But a true expert. I mean, really, from a brand and management culture standpoint, I learned a great deal from you on how you approach that. And obviously, you understand this business from a service and execution standpoint like no other. And it's just been, for me, always a great memory. I look forward to someday having the chance to work with you again.

Thank you, Ken. That's very kind of easy to say. I appreciate it. And yeah, we you know, we work globally. So I hope that that will happen in the near future. It's an exciting industry. And it's, you know, one thing I love about this industry is it's effectively a large group of friends, right? We always crossed paths again. You don't have to go too far to bump into somebody you've worked with before in the cruise industry. So that's something very exciting. But yeah, this has been a real pleasure. I've enjoyed our conversation, and I look forward to seeing you again soon.

You bet. Thanks for joining. Thanks.