When the Celebrity Xcel ties up on St. Thomas Dec. 9, some of the 3,200 passengers aboard will already have had a taste of what the Virgin Islands has to offer — or a facsimile of it.
The cruise industry has flirted with bringing shoreside experiences aboard for decades, procuring lamb on New Zealand itineraries and salmon in Alaska. Many ships bring on regional experts — historians, ecologists, oenologists — to explain what passengers see ashore.
For the Xcel, however, Celebrity Cruises plans to go a step further, serving traditional Caribbean food and drink, and staging an interactive carnival celebration that cruise line officials hoped would feel as natural and warm as the real thing.
While work crews at the Chandelier De Atlantique shipyard in Saint-Nazaire, France, were welding together the new Celebrity Xcel one sunny August day, Celebrity Cruises President Laura Hodges Bethge said the idea was for the passengers to get their dose of the Caribbean before stepping ashore.
“Our guests come to us, first and foremost, for where they’re going to visit. So it’s our opportunity to bring that on board the ship. It’s part of your journey, even when we’re not in the destination,” Hodges Bethge said during a tour of the ship during construction.
Each of the ship’s Caribbean itineraries will have a different region-specific festival, with music and performers that passengers can choose to interact with or not, she said.
Some cruises’ quest for authenticity falls short. A sweet umbrella drink does not necessarily equal tropical relaxation, Hodges Bethge said. But she and her team said they were making authenticity a selling point aboard the Xcel. If someone is feeling lazy, or if the weather didn’t cooperate, the passenger could get their dosage of near-authentic Virgin Islands splendor without leaving the ship, she said.
Celebrity sought local experts to guide their hand, getting the right food and drink recipes, right music, and carnival costuming for daily presentations and weekly celebrations, Hodges Bethge said.
Keith Lane, Celebrity’s senior vice president of hotel operations, said hot sauce and horseradish for Caribbean-style dishes and drinks would be sourced locally from various islands. Rather than inventing Caribbean traditions, Lane said Celebrity would hire local carnival experts to instruct other performers.
“You recruit. And we try to recruit the folks that will reflect the authenticity of the festival,” Lane said. The ships already have a fair number of Dominicans and Jamaicans but lack a robust population of Virgin Islanders, he said.
When the ship repositions to the Mediterranean in the summer, it will trade Caribbean pepper sauce for locally-sourced olive oil and swap Caribbean carnivals for southern European festivals.
“That’s the most complex piece. As far as getting the crew here, training the crew, then you look at the new venues, that’s where the complexity lies in,” Lane said. “It’s a big undertaking.”
These celebrations will take place in a dedicated space called the Bazaar. Celebrity plans to splatter color across enormous LED-lit walls and archways.
A bi-level lounge concept has a chef’s counter and cooking class space called Spice below, and a casual restaurant, Mosaic, above. The plan is for two sets of live musicians to play the same song at the same time, with hints of one performance wafting into the other space.
“Definitely, the Bazaar seems like the most complex piece because it isn’t just one concept,” Lane said.
The Bazaar will also feature a retail market with local — or locally inspired — items for sale.
The Xcel finished its sea trials in September and is scheduled to leave France for Fort Lauderdale in October, said Captain “Kirk” Kyriakos Matragkas. Its maiden voyage is scheduled for November and arrives on St. Thomas Dec. 9.
Matragkas said he was well acquainted with the Virgin Islands, having docked at Crown Bay many times.
He had high praise for the Virgin Islands’ harbor pilots. In some ports, the legally-mandated pilot comes aboard and has a cup of coffee and a chat while the bridge crew essentially does what they were going to do anyway, Matragkas said.
“The American pilots are way much more professional than the rest in Caribbean,” he said. “In U.S., they are great. In Europe, they are very good. In Asia, sometimes we face language barriers.”
For more on cruise ship construction, see “Where Cruise Ships are Born.”
Op-Ed: The Lounge | A Column for Men: Living the Lessons, Part 4 No Off Days: Accountability in Relationships
Relationships are not maintained by love alone. Love can light the spark, but it is emotional intelligence that keeps the fire from becoming a wildfire. Accountability is not just for public spaces or professional roles—it belongs at home, in the car, in the texts you send and the tone you use. If you do not learn how to manage yourself in close proximity to another person, love will not save you from what your behavior destroys.
We talk a lot about being ready for a relationship, but what most people mean is they are ready for companionship. They are ready for the good mornings, the shared meals, the posts, and the presence. What they are not always ready for is what comes after the honeymoon season ends. The moments when your triggers get touched. The moments when your expectations do not get met. The times when you feel unseen, unheard, or misunderstood. That is where maturity gets tested. That is where emotional intelligence either shows up—or disappears.
There are no off days when it comes to how you treat the people closest to you. That does not mean perfection. It means intention. It means recognizing that your bad day is not permission to be careless. It means remembering that proximity does not cancel out respect. Just because they love you does not mean they deserve your lowest self on repeat. Just because they are patient does not mean they are unaffected. Just because they are committed does not mean you get to stop being considerate.
One of the things Emotional Intelligence 2.0 reminded me is that relationships are emotional mirrors. They show you who you are under pressure. They reveal your patterns, your needs, your habits, and your emotional defaults. If you are not willing to sit with what gets exposed, you will always blame the other person when in fact it might be your own lack of emotional discipline. You will call their boundaries a problem when really, they are just protecting themselves from the parts of you that you refuse to examine.
Accountability in relationships is about more than saying “I messed up.” It is about doing the work to not keep messing up in the same way. It is about being honest about your triggers, owning your growth areas, and taking responsibility for how your actions land. It is about receiving correction without deflection. It is about offering grace without excusing patterns that need to shift.
We all want to be loved, but sometimes we sabotage the very thing we prayed for because we do not want to do the internal work it takes to sustain it. Love without self-awareness becomes manipulation. Love without self-management becomes instability. Love without accountability becomes entitlement. You start believing people should just accept you as you are while you actively harm them with your inconsistency. That is not love. That is self-centeredness dressed up as vulnerability.
I had to learn that emotional safety is not just about big gestures—it is about daily habits. It is about following through when you say you will. It is about controlling your tone, especially when things are tense. It is about not weaponizing silence. It is about naming what you feel without making the other person your enemy. And it is about doing all of this, not just when you feel like it, but consistently, because consistency builds trust.
There are no off days when it comes to character. You do not get to be emotionally available one week and emotionally reckless the next. You do not get to be a great communicator in public and then ghost your partner when you are mad. You do not get to demand grace and then disappear when it is your turn to give it. That is not maturity. That is convenience. And relationships built on convenience do not last.
This is where the work gets real. Because the closer someone gets to you, the more of you they see. The parts you hide from the world? They live with those parts. They get the unfiltered version of your moods, your stress, your ambition, your fear. So if you do not learn how to regulate what is going on inside of you, the people closest to you will always carry the consequences of your unchecked emotions.
But here is the good news—emotional intelligence can grow. You can become more aware. You can become more thoughtful. You can choose the pause. You can build new habits. You can repair what you did not know how to manage in previous seasons. And most of all, you can become someone who creates emotional safety, not emotional exhaustion.
So if you are in a relationship, or you are preparing for one, ask yourself some hard questions. How do you show up when you are disappointed? How do you respond when you feel misunderstood? Do you apologize well? Do you listen to understand or listen to defend? Are you consistent, or do you leave people guessing? Can you receive correction, or do you shut down?
Because love is not magic. Love is maintenance. And maintenance requires maturity.
There are no off days when it comes to relationships.
Editor’s Note: Opinion articles do not represent the views of the Virgin Islands Source newsroom and are the sole expressed opinion of the writer. Submissions can be made to visource@gmail.com.
Related Link:
Op-Ed: The Lounge | A Column for Men: Living the Lessons, Part 1: The Weight of the Collar: Accountability in Leadership
Op-Ed: The Lounge | A Column for Men: Living the Lessons, Part 2: The Mirror in the Home – Accountability in Fatherhood