New chief executive shares his hopes for the association and wider industry
Clia’s new global president and chief executive has set out his aim to make the association and wider industry “more unified”.
In his first interview since taking the helm, Charles ‘Bud’ Darr also spoke about how he plans to draw on his maritime experience to help the sector become more sustainable as he expressed his confidence it can reach net zero by 2050.
He acknowledged he is not a familiar name among the trade but shared his ambition to build “an even greater sense of community” between Clia and travel agents, with the hope of “succeeding together”.
More: New Clia boss confident overtourism and net zero challenges can be met
Darr rejoined Clia from MSC Group to succeed Kelly Craighead in February, having previously held the role of senior vice-president of technical and regulatory affairs from 2010 to 2017.
Darr on… his career
I’ve been a maritime guy ever since I broke away from my native roots in Nebraska. I worked in boatyards as a teenager and then I joined the Navy at 17 – my mum had to sign my contract because I was too young to sign it myself. I started in nuclear engineering and submarines and then became a marine deck officer. I’ve also been a competitive ocean-racing sailor. This naturally led to my career in the US Coast Guard, before I joined Clia for seven years (see below).
Now I’m back, I hope to use my experience from the maritime industry to help develop the way forward, particularly on decarbonisation and other sustainable ways to run a responsible business.
Darr on… unifying the cruise industry
I’m not going to completely reorganise the association, but we are going to evolve.
I want Clia to be more unified as an organisation and to extend that to the overall cruise community. I want to bring together, in a geographic and business sense, vendors, ports, destinations, shipbuilders, cruise lines, service providers and agents to form one big community.
It’s a big challenge and I think it’s very important because it’s a truly global industry which, as a community, can be more powerful than the sum of its parts.
Darr on… eco goals
One of the biggest challenges is that we don’t design, create, produce or deliver fuels. To be successful, we will have to get access to the new generations of fuels to use them on ships in the future.
Keep in mind we don’t know exactly what the lifespan of a modern cruise ship is. Before the pandemic, the average ship that went to recycling was over 40 years old, so the ships launching today are expected to be in service well beyond 2050.
For cruise in the longer term, methanol and methane in their advanced forms are the two most likely fuel paths. Those would be bio or synthetic, relying on green hydrogen which doesn’t exist yet, so there are a lot of steps to make to get there. In the shorter term, we have some biofuels that we can use.
My job is to help make sure the policymakers and energy providers are aware of the demand from the cruise sector. This is going to be the biggest factor in whether we make it [to net zero by 2050] or not. They need to help make the fuels available in sufficient volumes, because we’re prepared to be the early adopters.
I believe we can and will get there, and I’m seeing an incredibly high level of commitment from the cruise sector to make it happen.
Darr on… overtourism
For the business to make sense in the longer term, we have to do it in a way where it’s managed more cooperatively with the community, so it welcomes it and sees the benefit in it.
It’s in everybody’s interest to do that, and there have been plenty of examples where we have come to good solutions to help manage tourism flows, which quite honestly are often overstated with cruise and understated with others. It’s our job to acknowledge that we all have a problem. If a community feels like their tourism is unmanaged and that we are a component of that, we have to be part of the solution and not just complain. Working with communities is going to be a bigger and bigger part of what we do.
When it comes to tourist taxes, it’s quite problematic. [A tax] is appropriate if it’s going to pay for infrastructure which is going to make a better experience for the community and guests, but if it’s just to raise revenue, it tends to be quite counterproductive.
Darr on… pandemic recovery
If you ever really want to understand your business, try shutting it down and restarting it again. Having gone through that experience with the company I worked for at the time [MSC Group], it was one of those examples of ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’.
We came back as a better, stronger industry, and so much smarter about how to manage what works and what doesn’t. If we had a similar set of circumstances in the future, we would apply so much of what we learnt and be better prepared.
Darr on… the future
There are 67 ships on order for our ocean-going members right now, compared to 51 a year before.
It is a sign of tremendous optimism – not only from the cruise sector but also from the investment community – that this is an industry that has a lot of opportunity to continue to grow, which we have to do in a sustainable and meaningful way.
We are anticipating a record year for passengers for 2025 and estimating 44 million in 2030, compared to 31.7 million in 2023.
Darr on… the trade
If there’s one segment of our community that perhaps knows me less, it is the travel advisors. But I want to assure them that I always knew about them. I know how important they are as 70% of cruises today are sold by travel advisors.
I want to do my very best to try and inherently build a sense of community even greater than it was before and for them to connect with us even more than they have already. We want to make sure we’re providing true value to them, because we can all succeed together.
Darr on… hurdles
Geopolitical disruption is going to continue to be a factor in our personal and commercial lives.
At an event recently, someone said it feels like we’re not moving from one black swan to another, but instead that we’ve got a flock of black swans to deal with. These events are hard to predict and can last for an unpredictable and sometimes very long time. Fortunately, our assets are mobile, unlike a resort, for example, which can’t be moved to another location.
But [amending a schedule] isn’t an easy thing to do, because the lead times on planning itineraries and then marketing them are 12 to 30 months. It takes effort to do that well, but we have been very adaptable and we will continue to be nimble.
Bud Darr’s career
1983: Starts a six-year career in the US Navy. He begins as a nuclear propulsion engineering trainee and progresses to nuclear propulsion supervisor on the USS Baton Rouge.
1993: Moves to work for the US Coast Guard, finishing his nine years there as deputy chief and attorney in the office of maritime and international law.
2010: Begins his first stint at Clia as director of technical and regulatory affairs, environmental and health before moving to senior vice-president of technical and regulatory affairs.
2017: Becomes group executive vice-president of maritime policy and government affairs at MSC.
2025: Rejoins Clia as president and chief executive.
More: New Clia boss confident overtourism and net zero challenges can be met