Day: July 7, 2024

Brittany Chang/Business Insider

• Silversea’s new Silver Ray cruise ship has 544 crew members to tend to its 728 guests.
• The ship has 333 crew cabins and 540 beds, which means some have to share their rooms.
• The workers spend their free time in various common areas like a secret bar and small spa.

It takes a village to keep a cruise ship running. And after a long day of work, the villagers deserve a beer and a massage.

On luxury cruise line Silversea’s new ship, Silver Ray, guests can dine on free tins of caviar, luxuriate in the complimentary spa, and drink as many fancy cocktails as their hearts desire.

It’s one of Silversea’s parent company, Royal Caribbean Group’s, most high-end and contemporary ships. And much of its ritzy onboard experience is made possible by the crew.

Silver Ray has 544 crew members to tend to its 728 guests.Guests are encouraged to interact with the cooks at the 18-seat, 11-course SALT Chef’s Table restaurant, which costs $180 per person.

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This one-to-1.3 staff-to-guest ratio is hard to miss, from the suite’s affable butlers to the workers who remember your name after meeting you once in passing.

This kind of high-touch service is, in part, what distinguishes mass-market cruise lines from their luxury counterparts.

Workers’ hours vary vastly depending on their positions.Rohit Dimir, Silver Ray’s executive chef, told reporters during a tour of the ship in June that most of the bakery’s production is done at night.

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For example, some bakers work overnight to prepare the bread for breakfast service, while others — like some of the bar stsff — don’t start work until the afternoon, although their shift could go into the early morning hours as well.

They can head to the gym to decompress after a long day (or night) of work. The crew and guest gym have equipment from TechnoGym.

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Alessandro Zanello, Silver Ray’s captain, told reporters during a media panel in June that he thinks the crew gym on Silver Ray “is better than most of the guest gyms on previous ships.”

It looks less than half the size of the guest one on Silver Ray — but at it’s furnished with staples like treadmills, free weights, and resistance equipment.

What better way to recover from a workout than to sit in the steam room?“Every time you walk by, there’s somebody relaxing and looking outside the small porthole,” Alessandro Zanello, the captain of Silver Ray, told reporters in June.

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That’s right. Silver Ray also has a staff-only spa.

The compact space has a steam room and two plush massage chairs separated by a curtain. They’re first come, first serve — and, of course, in high demand, Zanello said.

Silver Ray’s guests can indulge at the ship’s eight bars.The crew bar is open from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., and 8:30 p.m. to 1 a.m, according to a sign posted on a bulletin board.

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The crew has a bar, too.

Most of the ship’s guest-facing bars are posh and elegant. This one feels more contemporary, with modern light fixtures and trendy art pieces that brighten the pockets of seating.

Or, they can spend their free time lounging in the dayroom.The dayroom has several seating nooks, a foosball table, and a coffee machine.

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Here, folks can chit-chat at a large window-lined booth or charge their phones while perusing the internet (using Starlink, of course).

The dayroom is also equipped with the same coffee machines as the one available in the guest observation lounge. So, instead of sharing an old pot of black coffee, the team can instantly brew themselves a latte or cappuccino.

The 2,350 workers on Royal Caribbean Group’s new world-largest cruise ship, Icon of the Seas, has a game room stocked with consoles.A rendering of the game room on Icon of the Seas (left) and the foosball in the crew-only lounge on Silver Ray (right).

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Unfortunately, Silver Ray doesn’t have a staff-only game room. But at least the lounge has a foosball table!

The conjoined outdoor space is much simpler, furnished with only a few seats and tables.The outdoor lounge has a platform with sweeping views of the ship’s surroundings.

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Workers are also welcome to sunbathe in a small sliver of the guest area on the top deck. But with that comes rules, like no music, food, drinks, or nudity, according to a sign posted on a crew bulletin board.

Don’t expect to see all of your waitstaff at the breakfast buffet.Breakfast is served from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., lunch from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and dinner from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

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They have their own small buffet, stocked four times daily for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late-night from 10:30 p.m. to midnight.

The crew represents 45 nationalities worldwide. To accommodate all these backgrounds, Rohit Dimir, Silver Ray’s executive chef, told reporters during a ship tour in June that their meals are generally a mix of global cuisines, from “oriental soup” to salads and grilled foods.

The adjacent dining room is open around the clock.The crew mess has the same coffee machines available to guests.

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Andrea Tonet, Silversea’s vice president of product strategy, told reporters that about 98% of Silver Ray’s private and public spaces have ocean views and floor-to-ceiling glass walls.

While the crew mess doesn’t have these expansive windows, it does have small portholes that brighten the dense space.

More contemporary art — like a print of “Girl with a Pearl Earring” with a face tattoo — brings personality to the large dining room, as do the television screens streaming programs like Fox News.

There’s nothing better than decompressing alone in your bedroom after a long day of work. The smallest guest suites are 357 square feet.

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For some workers, “alone” isn’t part of the equation.

Silver Ray has 364 guest suites (the smallest of which is pictured above), all with sumptuous amenities like walk-in closets, balconies, and butlers.

In comparison, the ship’s 333 crew cabins have 540 beds, which means some have roommates.

On the bright side, Zanello said some accommodations have more than one TV. So, if Fox News in the dining room isn’t cutting it, and you don’t want to watch your roommate’s movie, at least you’ll have your own TV.

After all, happy crew, happy cruise.

Carlos Delgado/AP

• You need more than a battery-powered car to get Wall Street’s attention these days.
• The hype train has moved on to EV software.
• The latest deal between Rivian and Volkswagen shows how investor interests have changed.

A battery-powered car alone is no longer enough to excite Wall Street.

Many companies are now on the same playing field when it comes to EV range, charging times, and the ability to mass-produce these vehicles. That leaves Wall Street investors looking for something else to set an electric vehicle maker apart: software.

Leading this change in investor interest is, once again, Tesla.

As an ongoing slowdown in the growth of electric car sales finally pinched Elon Musk’s car company this year, the billionaire has been putting more emphasis on the power of Tesla’s software to underpin a driverless robotaxi fleet, which would create an entirely new revenue stream just as sales revenue is shrinking.

The plans helped reverse a weekslong rout in Tesla’s stock price as Musk once again hyped “a combination of Airbnb and Uber,” that would up utilization of owners’ cars when they’d otherwise sit parked and help them gain value over time — the opposite of what usually happens with new vehicles.

As demand for EVs wanes and Tesla’s plans for a more affordable model are no more apparent, investors have latched onto Musk’s software-based plans for the company.

“The key for Tesla’s stock looking ahead is the Street recognizing that Tesla is the most undervalued AI play in the market,” Dan Ives, a longtime Tesla bull at Wedbush, wrote in a note to clients in early July.

Tesla has a Robotaxi day scheduled for investors next month that Ives says “will lay the yellow brick road to FSD and an autonomous future.”

All aboard the hype train

It appears Tesla’s competitors are recognizing the same change in the hype cycle.

Rivian, which has been facing its own issues with a falling stock price and disappointing financial results, is now riding high after announcing a software joint venture with Volkswagen.

The companies said that Volkswagen will make an initial $1 billion investment in Rivian as part of a software development deal. It’s Rivian’s second high-profile joint venture with a major automaker since it burst onto the scene a few years ago.

The first was a $500 million investment from Ford to build EVs in a joint venture Rivian struck before it had even started production. That deal eventually fizzled, and the companies did not end up building a car together.

Now, heading into the second generation of its pickup truck and SUV lineup, Rivian is joining forces with Volkswagen on the brain of the vehicle.

After losing its post-IPO luster, Rivian has struggled to boost its stock price in recent years despite decent demand for their cars and well-received redesigns and new models announced earlier this year.

In a sign that the hype train has moved on from just EVs to the software that powers them, Rivian’s stock enjoyed a 49% surge in after-hours trading following the announcement of the VW deal.

EV startups have always followed Wall Street’s interests to raise money

Joint ventures like the one between Rivian and Volkswagen have become a common occurrence in recent years, and while the contents of these deals often change, the motivation remains the same.

Startups like Rivian need to follow Wall Street’s interests to keep money flowing. This time, a software-focused deal appears to have done the trick.

As of Friday afternoon, Rivian‘s stock was still hovering above its more recent averages, up about 22% since its last closing price before the deal was announced June 25.

The day after Rivian and Volkswagen announced the partnership Bank of America analyst John Murphy praised the deal as a smart money-raising move for Rivian.

Murphy said the deal, totaling $5 billion in investment from VW over time, will aid in funding Rivian’s ongoing production ramp-up of the R2 lineup in Normal, Il, as well as a second factory in Georgia that will house the R3 vehicle platform.

“We have assumed RIVN would need to raise more capital, and VW’s investments in RIVN will prove valuable in helping it achieve the scale necessary to get to positive free cash flow,” Murphy wrote.

While Volkswagen’s stock price hasn’t enjoyed the same ride as Rivian’s, investors are pleased to see the German automaker focusing on improving its software development programs.

JP Morgan analyst Jose Asumendi called the joint venture “a positive step in the right direction to accelerate the transition of VW Group into becoming a more agile entity.”

В Одессе и Киеве сегодня ночью сожгли автомобили, принадлежащие военнослужащим. Об этом сообщают украинские ресурсы.