Lisa Lutoff-Perlo

United States
President and CEO, Celebrity Cruises
A Conversation With Lisa Lutoff-Perlo

Award-winning and highly respected business leader with 30+ years of hospitality industry experience. Lisa is currently leading a multi-billion-dollar brand with a diverse workforce of over 20,000. Recognized as a bold decision maker and global change-agent who inspires growth through operational innovation and an unwavering commitment to excellence. Identifies and leads high performing and culturally diverse teams to create transformative and disruptive marketing and service resulting in unprecedented growth, shareholder value, and historic financial performance. Lisa sits on local and international nonprofit boards including Columbia University School of Professional Studies, Board of Overseers; Best Buddies Global Board of Directors; and United Way of Broward County.

Lisa is a business transformation expert as evidenced through her results during her career at Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. She has held progressive positions with expanding scope, responsibility and P&L oversight. She combines her ability to develop vision and strategy with her transformative leadership style to achieve outstanding financial performance, groundbreaking marketing and brand building, and industry leading guest satisfaction.

She became President and CEO of Celebrity Cruises in December of 2014 and has led Celebrity to historic financial performance including doubling operating income, delivering double digit ROIC, double digit yield improvement and increasing EBITDA by 70%. All are the highest in brand history. She oversees over $5B in capex investment to deliver state of the art ships and modernize the existing Celebrity fleet, resulting in significant yield improvement. Under her leadership, these results have been achieved through disruptive thinking, a keen understanding of the customer and consumer trends, and expertise in operational excellence.

Examples include:

  • Rebranding Celebrity as a modern luxury brand and transforming guest segmentation to attract affluent vacationers through traditional and digital channel and robust data analytics.
  • Increasing working marketing spend by 47% to increase brand awareness and conversion of affluent vacationers.
  • Strengthening guest experience through a strong service culture, partnership with Forbes Travel Guide to verify luxury, and implementing industry leading partnerships like Daniel Boulud and American Ballet Theater, all resulting in an industry leading 8-point increase in net promoter score over three years.
  • Launching transformational and innovative new ships – Edge series and Celebrity Flora – into the marketplace to critical acclaim.
  • Realizing significant cost efficiency, business synergies and best practice implementation by establishing and leading the first in industry consolidated Global Marine Organization, overseeing 59 ships and 6 brands.

She has received numerous awards for her groundbreaking work and contributions in both the travel industry and business communities. Lisa attended Bentley University and Wharton School of Business.