Director, Entertainment Operations
Carnival Corporation · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States · onsite
One of the best-known names in cruising, Princess is the world’s leading international premium cruise line and tour company, carrying millions of guests each year to hundreds of destinations around the globe. We give our guests the Medallion Class experience others simply can’t. The Love Boat promises something for everyone.
The Director, Entertainment Operations leads the Entertainment Operations vertical and is the executive owner of the day-to-day delivery of the Princess Cruises entertainment program across the fleet. This is a newly defined role within the restructured shoreside organization, created to bring clear accountability to the quality, consistency, and integrity of the entertainment product as it is experienced by guests on every voyage.
The Director, Operations owns the programming standards, scheduling guidelines, and operational frameworks that govern how entertainment is delivered across all Princess Cruises vessels. This role provides direct oversight of a diverse team covering music programming, guest entertainers, enrichment, activities and family programming. All aligned to the strategic pillars of the PCL Entertainment Strategy.
A key mandate of this role is to build and strengthen the conduit between the shoreside organization and the fleet ensuring Cruise Directors and shipboard teams receive the support, guidelines, oversight, and communication they need to execute the entertainment program at the level the strategy demands.
Here’s a summary of what Princess is looking for in a Director, Entertainment Operations. Is this you?
Responsibilities:
Programming Standards, Scheduling & Guest Experience Integrity
- Own the development, communication, and enforcement of fleet-wide entertainment programming guidelines and scheduling standards, ensuring consistent, intentional placement of events, activities, music, and enrichment across the voyage.
- Establish and maintain the guiding principles for onboard scheduling. Including voyage structure, evening flow, venue and space assignment, off-limits guidelines, programming strategy, and family programming considerations. Ensure these are integrated into shipboard systems and consistently applied across the fleet.
- Drive the quality and artistic integrity of the entertainment program across all non-theatrical programming categories: live music, guest entertainers, enrichment, activities, gameshows, parties, and interactive events.
- Champion the strategic shift in entertainment scheduling from a volume-driven model to an intentional, guest-curated programming approach. Ensuring events are placed where they enhance atmosphere, flow is optimized, and the Patter and app accurately reflect a compelling entertainment offer.
Fleet Support, Cruise Director Oversight & Shipboard Engagement
- Serve as the primary shoreside point of accountability for Cruise Director performance, programming execution, and operational standards, establishing a clear line of communication, training, and oversight between the shoreside team and the fleet.
- Develop and implement the fleet pod support structure, including four traveling Cruise Director support roles, to provide active, ongoing shoreside engagement with shipboard entertainment operations.
- Provide programming guidance and direct support to Cruise Directors on scheduling decisions, activity execution, guest entertainer management, and enrichment delivery.
- Ensure Cruise Directors and shipboard entertainment teams are trained on new programming principles, standards, and product launches.
Music, Enrichment, Activities & Guest Entertainer Program Oversight
- Provide strategic oversight of the music programming function, ensuring the team responsible for live and background music curates a fleet-wide mix intentionally aligned to the Voyager guest profile and top-performing genres, and that genre strategy is actively marketed both onboard and pre-cruise.
- Set the strategic direction for the Princess signature Enrichment program, establishing its scope, standards, and separation from revenue-generating activities, and oversee the team responsible for its development and fleet-wide execution, ensuring it meaningfully encompasses destination programming, port information, cultural content, and interactive discovery across all trades.
- Oversee the guest entertainers and enrichment booking function, holding the team accountable for the quality, consistency, and program management of headline acts, lecturers, comedians, and enrichment speakers across the fleet, and escalating where quality or availability standards are not being met.
- Provide oversight of the activities and family programming teams, ensuring they are delivering against the strategic objectives of the department, including the evolution of gameshows, destination trivia, party branding and theming, youth and family programming, and next-generation interactive experiences, and intervening to course-correct where programming falls short of established standards.
Guest Communication, Brand Presence & Pre-Cruise Marketing
- Drive the strategic initiative to elevate guest communication around entertainment, improving Patter accuracy and usability, separating entertainment content from revenue content in the app, and amplifying onboard signage and marketing for entertainment programming.
- Lead the launch and ongoing management of pre-cruise entertainment marketing, including the Princess Entertainment website, pre-cruise communications, and external-facing entertainment messaging, in partnership with Commercial, Marketing, and Communications stakeholders.
- Develop and maintain the department's external brand presence, including the Princess Entertainment digital footprint, to enhance brand perception and attract high-caliber entertainment talent.
- Ensure entertainment is effectively promoted and visible throughout the guest journey, from pre-booking through embarkation, at-sea experience, and post-cruise engagement.
- Lead the creation of key department presentations and support the execution of major public appearances, industry events, and stakeholder meetings on behalf of the Entertainment Operations vertical.
Innovation, Interactive Events & F&B/Experience Integration
- Lead the operational development and rollout of new interactive entertainment concepts, including Spellbound concept refinement, upcharge interactive classes and tours, and F&B venue entertainment activations.
- Collaborate with Hotel Operations, Food & Beverage, and Revenue teams to integrate entertainment into the wider guest experience in ways that generate incremental value without compromising the integrity of the core entertainment program.
- Evaluate new programming concepts through a structured pilot-and-data framework before fleet-wide rollout, ensuring decisions are driven by guest feedback and measurable performance.
Knowledge & Skills:
- Scope: This role has the broadest operational scope within the Entertainment department, directly influencing the day-to-day guest experience on every Princess Cruises voyage across the entire fleet. The Director, Entertainment Operations oversees a team of 14 across music programming, guest entertainers, enrichment, activities, family programming, and operations, and maintains active fleet engagement through the Cruise Director oversight structure. This role interfaces regularly with the VP, Entertainment, the two other Director-level peers and cross-functional leaders in Hotel Operations, Finance, Marketing, and Food & Beverage.
- Problem solving: This role routinely manages ambiguous, guest-facing challenges with fleet-wide implications: a scheduling conflict that places competing high-demand events at the same time on the same ship; a booking shortfall in the guest entertainer roster for an upcoming trade; a Cruise Director executing programming in a manner inconsistent with the new guiding principles; or a new interactive event