Princess Cruises today announced that Terry Thornton – a highly accomplished cruise industry veteran with nearly four decades of experience in commercial, financial, itinerary planning and deployment, strategic port operations – has been named Senior Vice President of Commercial Development and Integration, according to a press release.
Over the past year Thornton has worked closely with Princess leadership as a strategic commercial consultant and will now report directly to John Padgett, President of Princess Cruises, in his full-time executive role.
Working in tandem with the company’s senior commercial, marketing, sales and port leaders, Thornton will be responsible for directing all integrated strategic and tactical decisions with a goal of maximizing financial performance and building upon Princess’ distinction as the “World’s Most Iconic Cruise Brand,” the company said.
“With more than four decades in a wide range of cruise industry leadership positions, Terry will focus on accelerating the commercial development and overall financial performance for Princess through integrated deployment, pricing, revenue management, marketing, sales and information intelligence initiatives,” said Padgett. “Terry’s 30-plus-years at Carnival Cruise Line building a high performing, resilient and efficient economic model will be instrumental to Princess Cruises’ continued inroads toward next-level economic performance.”
Thornton began his career with Norwegian Cruise Line in financial and marketing planning, before helping to establish two luxury cruise start-ups – Sea Goddess (now SeaDream) and Windstar.
Following Carnival Corporation’s acquisition of Holland America Line and Windstar, he joined Carnival Cruise Line in 1989. During his tenure at Carnival, Thornton held senior roles in all commercial areas including marketing, distribution, pricing, revenue management, fleet deployment, itinerary planning, port development and maritime operations, consistently delivering strong results and playing a critical role in the company’s success.
