Lance Glinn:

Welcome into another episode of the Inside the ICE House podcast. Today's guest is Tor Hagen. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Viking. Tor, thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House. Happy to have you here.

Tor Hagen:

Well, nice to be here. Thank you very much.

Lance Glinn:

So when people look at Viking today, they see a publicly traded, globally recognized sort of luxury brand with a very clear point of view. But I'd love to go back first and foremost to the early days, right? Back to the late '90s when you first founded the company. Or what were you first building with Viking? How did you sort of balance this creation of a good product, but also the building of a brand? Because you don't just want it to last for a year, you want it as it has to last for decades.

Tor Hagen:

I don't know whether I could go a little bit further back in history even.

Lance Glinn:

Okay.

Tor Hagen:

Because earlier in life I ran a public company in Norway called Bergen Line and we had an investment in a shipping company called Royal Viking Line, which was a fantastic cruise line at the time. Had nothing to do with it. But we were partially head-officed in San Francisco and partially in Norway. And the guy invented that was a guy called Warren Titus, who had really set the standard for what cruising ought to be. So we had three ships, over 530 passengers each, and we said, "This is a fantastic thing." Then people want to not continue with that, so then I want to do a buyout. And I tried to do a buyout and had it done, but it didn't quite succeed in the end.

But then since then, been sort of following the industry, I've been on the board of Holland America line. I helped Costa Cruise raise some money and go from one place to the other. But of course in the company I ran in Norway, the Bergen Line, it was a publicly listed company at the time. So I had some experience with-

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

... the public companies. But then things go up and down. And at one stage, at my reunion at Harvard Business School, they said, "I'm the one who had lost the most." It wasn't so much, it was everything. But that now back in 1992, three about. And then I had been in Russia in the Russian equity market and I'd seen some cheap things there, but I had an opportunity to buy into a company that owned four Russian river cruise vessels. And before that, I'd taken a tax-loss carrier forward that we had and I sold that for a million dollars, and I went back into the Russian equity market in '94, and bought gas from local shares for eight cents and sold them for 64. So all of a sudden my one million was now five and a half, and I needed eight, so a couple of pals throw in some. And then we had something to start with. With two guys, two mobile phones and four Russian river cruise ship. And that was really the beginning of Viking the way it is.

Lance Glinn:

Now, it obviously was complex and it was a journey that had ups and it had downs. And like you said, at one point you lost everything and you sort of had to rebuild. And the way you tell it sort of makes it feel so simple, but it obviously isn't. And then as I said before, you then have to focus on not just building a product that works in the short term, you have to focus on obviously wanting to build something that could last decades. So when you're doing that, how do you make sure that you're doing the latter, building something that could last a long time?

Tor Hagen:

Well, of course, I'd had the Royal Viking Line, so I had some ambition and maybe one could recreate something like it. So when we bought these four Russian river cruise ships, we had to find a suitable name. I said, "What is more suitable than calling it Viking River Cruises?" And that's how that got its start. So I've seen what a good cruise line could look like in the Royal Viking Line, and then I said, "Let's see if we can replicate that." But of course when you've been pretty much wiped out, you had to take smaller steps to get there and it's taken a while.

Lance Glinn:

And I think one of the things that sort of stands out about Viking is its sort of distinctness in a category where companies I think can kind of blur together to a certain extent. When you think about the brand philosophy, the tone, the values, the aesthetic, everything that sort of goes into it, how much of that came from personal taste, came from previous experience and allows a brand like Viking to stand out amongst a pretty crowded field?

Tor Hagen:

Yeah. Obviously when you have such a limited capital base, excuse me, as we had at that time, you're limited in terms of what you can invest in. So then you can't build big ships, not that that was really on the rise neither, but then we said, let's continue to build on a river business where the units are smaller and we find creative ways of financing that through tax leases and so forth in Europe. So it was really stone upon stone.

It took a while when we started it in 1997 and by 2012 we had become a more or less a real company, but it took a while. And then of course the ambition had always been there to see if one couldn't have a proper ocean cruise line. And that started in 2012 with our ideas of how to do that. And we got the first cruise ship delivered in 2015 and since then it's been more or less one way upwards. But of course between 1997 and 2015, we had a couple of Iraq wars, we had had had 9/11. So when you then have been highly leveraged and all that, we have had our interesting moments.

Lance Glinn:

Sure, sure. And so you talk about all these successes, right? You talk about how it started, you talk about how it's been built up over the years and over the decades, but I would assume it's hard... And correct me if I'm wrong. I would assume that it's hard at times with not just yourself but the entire company. There's always that worry when you continue to get a scale and you continue to grow that there's the risk of sort of complacency of that, "Hey, we've made it type of attitude." How do you defend against that and combat that so that there is no complacency and you continue to grow and continue to have greater success than say you had the previous year?

Tor Hagen:

Well, I don't feel there's a basis for complacency where we are.

Lance Glinn:

Okay.

Tor Hagen:

We were here in New York two years ago, May 1st, and did our IPO. And I think that has turned out quite well for those who invested at the time. We needed to do it because we had private equity investors and by the nature of things, they had to get liquidity for their investments. So when we listed, I think the listing price was $24 and today I saw 7777. So I call that three times in two years, which I think been a good journey for the new shareholders too. But I don't think we are ready yet or finished yet. We're probably ready but not finished. We have many more ambitions in life.

Lance Glinn:

So Tor, I want to just talk about now the idea of luxury. And I'd argue that luxury has changed since Viking was first formed in 1997. I think it used to be about excess and formality, and I think now it kind of means space, simplicity, things really having meaning so to speak. From your vantage point, how has the definition of luxury evolved and how do you think about it today compared to say 30 years ago in 1997?

Tor Hagen:

This is a very hot topic in our company because when I was first in the cruising, as I said, Warren Titus of Royal Viking Line, he said, "Tor, don't use the word luxury. It means so many different things to different people." And certainly Royal Viking Line at the time was by luxury by any standard. But then you can say, as we now developed our own product, we say, "What are we?" And then you can say in the categories, you can say people define cruises as budget, premium luxury. And we have been reluctant to use the word luxury about ourselves because with luxury, I think about butlers, white gloves-

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

... all this. Who has a butler at home?

Lance Glinn:

I think of Great Gatsby sometime when I think of luxury.

Tor Hagen:

All that stuff.

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

It's outdated in my mind. So we try to avoid it, but of course, since we avoid it, then people say, "Oh, we are just premium." That's not true. And I even dare to say we are beyond luxury. We are really appealing to a different psychographic because when you look at the big cruise lines or the ones who have been here for many years, they're huge ships and they say, "The ship is a destination." We say, "Nonsense, we are about the destination, remaining the destination, and we take care of people that way." So it's almost more of what you are not than what we are. So we have something we're very proud of. We have something called the no list. So we define ourselves well by what we are not.

Lance Glinn:

Got it.

Tor Hagen:

So we are no children, no casinos, no nickel and diming and a whole slew of things we are not, and that it makes us so different.

So you can say when we look at where we get our guests from, most of our guests have been on other cruise lines, but then they've been there with their children and as the children have grown up and with their rock climbing walls and all that, our guests then mature a bit and get different taste, a little bit more sophisticated. So I think we have defined really a different dimension. So you can't continue. You can't say we are beyond luxury, that sounds too glib. But I think what we can say is that we are a different dimension and we are really for the thinking person.

And I think increasingly this is a space that other cruise lines have come to realize is a very interesting space to occupy, but of course we have defined ourselves like that from the very beginning and that's why it's so important for us the places we go to, what we do and the places where we come to when we go there and not what goes on on the ship. So it's not nightclubs and drinking and bumper cars-

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

... and all that. We are for adult people, so we are 55 years old only and I think that distinguishes us very, very clearly. And we are on language. We are English speaking only. So the vast majority of our guests come from North America. We have a few Brits and a few Australians, but that's it. Admittedly, we have now also said, we want to appeal similarly to the Chinese markets. We built a small position in the Chinese outbound market, and there of course we are Mandarin speakers only. So I think it's very clear people like to travel with like-minded people and it's very clear who you travel with when you travel with Viking, and we take good care of our guests.

Lance Glinn:

And so we spoke to, again, this growth that Viking has been on, not just over the last two years, but dating back decades. How do you think about growth and potentially expanding into new horizons, but not diluting that experience that makes Viking what it is? How do you think about ensuring that the non-negotiables that made the success happen stay even as the number of ships increase, the number of destinations increase, and that's obviously the number of people spending the time on Viking ships also increases.

Tor Hagen:

That is a very good question. And of course you always get ideas. People say, "Why don't you do the following? Why don't we just have a couple of cruises in the summer where grandparents can take their grandchildren?" And we say, "No, we have to be very strict to who we are." So I'd say that if we are going to get into any new product lines other than those we have, it has to be a product that is commensurate with the experience people have with us. We have to be in absolute control of it ourselves and it has to be scalable. We don't want to do any sausage stance. We want to do proper real scalable business and that's what we've done. So we've done it first in the river cruising business where we now have some 50% market share. And I think we've also been successful on the ocean cruise business. I used the word cruise, but probably should be careful not to use it because we are so different.

But on the ocean journey side, we have a 25% market share, but there we have an order book which will more than double our position, and we're selling out so far in advance and that's of course great now in this day and age where we are to be sold out. So we have huge opportunities ahead. We have a big order book and we have good prices on it and we have a brand, which I think as long as we stick to who we are and don't try to dilute the brand, then I think we should have many, many good years ahead of us.

Lance Glinn:

And that's got to be hard, right? Because as companies grow, as companies scale, there are obviously new markets that come into play. There are new customers that come into play. There are new ideas that come into play from people within the company, people outside of the company. You said it, right? There's so many people saying, "Oh, why don't you do this or why don't you do that?"

Tor Hagen:

Well, we have one benefit. My family controls 53% of the shares. I think we are in 85% of the vote or whatever, not that it matters, but at least it's good to have one point of reference. And I know when people say, "If," I say, "When I'm no longer here, then at least I know I have somebody else who will take very good care of the brand and the values that we stand for." So the whole trick is, I think Nancy Reagan said it, "Just say no." So I think the trick is more to say no-

Lance Glinn:

Than to say yes.

Tor Hagen:

... than to say yes. And when we look at our plans, we see that our plans in a current line of business will take us so far that we don't feel any need or doing anything extraordinary different.

Lance Glinn:

And to that point, right, we talked a little bit earlier about luxury and this idea of what luxury could be to a number of different people and how sort of the idea of it has evolved. How do you think about balancing, you can use the word luxury, you don't need to, you can say premium, you don't need to, but how do you think about balancing sort of that idea with accessibility while also making sure there's sort of a feeling of aspiration but still welcoming, right? Because you want to be... Again, you don't have to use the word luxury, but you still want everyone to feel welcome in what they're coming aboard to.

Tor Hagen:

I think people when they go with Viking do feel welcome, and I think that's very largely due to our staff. We have a choice of staff in the industry and our guests say they go there because of our staff. Slightly differently, our staff tells us they like to be with Viking because of the guests we have, well, their very nice, friendly guests. They're not necessarily filthy rich, but they're comfortably well off people who have earned their money, who are curious, who like to experience new things and like to relate in a reasonable manner, also to the staff on our ships, and don't have to go around posting that they're in the biggest suites and have the finest wines or whatever. So I think it's a very, very good combination.

Lance Glinn:

And so when this comes out, we're going to be right around the two-year anniversary of Viking listing here on the New York Stock Exchange. Obviously you said it earlier that you've had prior to Viking experience in the public market, so it's not anything new to you, but what has changed since going public or what have you've done to, I guests, ensure that everything stayed as it was, right? How has going public and being public over the last two years, has it changed the company at all? Has it changed the mindset, or have you made sure that what got Viking to the success that it has achieved stayed with Viking through these last two years?

Tor Hagen:

Well, the strange thing is, as I said, from early age, I think I was 33 when I was CEO of a publicly listed company in Norway. Now I must admit to be publicly listed in those days were quite different-

Lance Glinn:

Okay. Sure.

Tor Hagen:

... from what it is now, but at least you have similar experience.

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

So you can say from the day we started Viking River Cruises in 1997, we have been behaving as if we either are or would be a public company at some stage. So we have had audited accounts. We have a board of directors which consist of professional people from the outside. So that's the way we have behaved and we have had bonds outstanding. I think we have an excellent investor relations team which relate to the investors, and then when we went public, we said, "Of course, some things will change."

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

But at the same time, I think in our listing memorandum, we also said there are certain things I hope will never change. I wrote a letter to shareholders. I mimicked a little bit of what Jeff Bezos wrote in 1997 in his first letter to shareholders. I shouldn't draw any parallels further than that, but it's nothing wrong in having an ambitious person as a target. Yeah. So I said, "There are four things we should make sure does not change even if we are a public company." So the first thing is we will continue to obsess about our customers and that I dare say we do. The second thing is we will continue to treat our staff as a member of our family and I think that's the experience they have. The third thing is we shall not worry about the short term, we should worry about the long term. And I think we said we will be careful. We shouldn't have any aspirations to give guidance. We should give facts, but not guidance.

Things change. Who can give guidance in advance of an episode like we've had in the past-

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

... month or so. And the fourth thing which is important is that we will also take greater care of the environment, and there I think we are leading. We have some points of view which are different from other cruise lines, but we're now coming out with the first partially hydrogen powered ship. It may not be hugely economical to put it mildly, but at least we can show that it's possible to operate. For example, in Norwegian Fjord we have true zero emission ships.

Lance Glinn:

Wow.

Tor Hagen:

And by background, I am a scientist, okay, science from 60 years ago maybe different from science now, but we'd like to take a scientific approach to the world and I think we have done that with regard to fuel too. But who knows? There are so many things that change.

Lance Glinn:

Absolutely. And I want to talk about that background a little bit because dating back to your schooling, it doesn't scream, right? If you look at your accolades educationally, it doesn't really scream travel or hospitality. So MBA from Harvard Business, a physics degree in Norway, computer studies at Wesley. And how has that analytical, that technical and that systems oriented thinking and education shaped the way you've built and maintained Viking success?

Tor Hagen:

I know it's who I am. And we talk a little bit about my mom, you didn't go to school without having done all your homework and really sat on top of you to make sure everything was perfect. I think that's a grounding that it sits with you forever and I'm highly appreciative. At the same time, I had a father who was a very smart man. He was not the least interested in money. He was a chartered accountant or CPA, whatever we call it in this country, and ran a couple of saw mills and flour mills and the like. He was very smart and very respected, but he was not interested in money. And quite frankly, I may have inherited part of that from him because I'm not suffering, don't get me wrong-

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

... but I've never had any ambition to be really rich.

Lance Glinn:

And so you also did, and correct me if I'm wrong, advanced academic work related to AI long before it became part of the cultural conversation that it has over the last, I don't know, four or five years, whatever it may be. If you could think back to writing about it, researching it, studying it, what did you sort of see or understand about technology and intelligence that others may have not fully appreciated at the time? Because I mean, it impacts our everyday life no matter what we do.

Tor Hagen:

It may not be so well-thought-out, but I studied physics and I had a best friend in Norway and the story goes that we agree there is only space for one good physicist in Norway. In physics, you're either number one or nobody.

Lance Glinn:

Sure. If you're not first you're last. Except a degree with writing.

Tor Hagen:

You're nothing. If you're in business, you can be number one, two, three, four. So the story goes, it may not be absolutely true, but the story goes that he and I tossed a coin and I lost. So he ended up at Caltech doing his PhD with Richard Feynman and became a prodigy of him and Feynman, I guess you know who he is?

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

Feynman, in one of his books, describes that my friend Finn is the one who taught him or convinced him about the quark model of the nucleus. Neither of them invented it or were the first one to find out about it, but Feynman gives my friend Finn the credit.

So then I had to go to business school and I had applied for and been admitted to Harvard, which was fine, but then I needed to do a quick thesis. So I had to do something where physics labs were not open. So I said, "Let me do a thesis over the summer." And I did it on artificial intelligence. So I designed a computer, a computer program, that played the game of Gonaraba. It's called Five in a Row, Noughts Crosses, Five in a Row. It's not like Tic-Tac-Toe, which is a determinant game, but I did that and it played against itself-

Lance Glinn:

Wow.

Tor Hagen:

... and it improved itself. This is 1966.

Lance Glinn:

You were a man ahead ahead of your time.

Tor Hagen:

And it was quite a good work, but of course I didn't use it for anything. So can you imagine if I'd followed up, I could have been a really rich man today.

Lance Glinn:

I don't know if you'd be who you is today-

Tor Hagen:

I could have been really rich.

Lance Glinn:

... if you had followed up with it. So quick to that point, would you say... Because you mentioned the coin toss, right? And so you said you loss the coin toss.

Tor Hagen:

I said the story goes.

Lance Glinn:

Sure the story goes. If the story stays as it is, could you say that that was sort of the greatest coin toss you've ever lost?

Tor Hagen:

I don't know if that's the right word, but the good thing is my friend Finn and I, this is back in 1966, still is 1966, we remain friends to date.

Lance Glinn:

Amazing.

Tor Hagen:

See each other quite often. And I've had one vacation in these almost 30 years we've had Viking and it was to Antarctica, Christmas, two years and a bit ago, and I had along my neighbors from Oslo and my friend Finn-

Lance Glinn:

Wow.

Tor Hagen:

And we had a fantastic time. But anyway, so that's how I got into it, but I've been fortunate because I'd been working summers for IBM and of course at that time we had a box of punch cards and unfortunately I ran into a problem with a box because when I handed in and I was about to go on the plane to business school, all of a sudden the damn program didn't run any longer.

Lance Glinn:

Wow.

Tor Hagen:

So I said, "What do you do?" So I said, "Well, let me hand it in anyway." There are two possible outcomes, either they run it and they say, "Wow, it must have been our fault that [inaudible 00:26:53] may have been out of sequence." Or probably more likely they won't run it. They'll just look at all the work I did. I know what they did, but at least nobody complained. Unfortunately, the box of cards remained at my mother's home and I've lost it, but I have a computer printout of all of this under my thesis and one day I've tested it on ChatGPT and they said something, this cannot have been done in 1966. And as a matter of fact, I had the idea, I almost had it on my resume for the-

Lance Glinn:

Wow.

Tor Hagen:

... listing memorandum here in New York.

Lance Glinn:

Right.

Tor Hagen:

But I said, "I can't put it because people will not believe it." But it was a very good experience and I think it has taught me a lot of the discipline that I've had in life.

Lance Glinn:

So the story goes that you lost the coin toss, but now here we are and you go in and put your thesis into ChatGPT and you essentially beat ChatGPT because ChatGPT said there's no way that this could happen in 1966.

Tor Hagen:

They didn't say quite-

Lance Glinn:

You've essentially beat... You lost the coin toss, but you beat ChatGPT.

Tor Hagen:

We are probably exaggerating a little bit.

Lance Glinn:

Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.

Tor Hagen:

Quite frankly, but of course it's a fantastic background to-

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

... have had, and I think it helps the way you do things. And I dare say the way Viking is being run, I'm a Norwegian, Scandinavian, we like to think ourselves as being democratic people. I don't believe the CEO or chairman should have much decisions to make. We have an executive committee of eight people who effectively decide everything we do in the company. And I feel if we meet every Thursday, it'll be soon they meet every Thursday with well-prepared analysis. And I would say if you have the facts in order, the decisions make themselves. So I think that has helped us a lot in terms of the type of company we are.

Lance Glinn:

And so I want to go behind the scenes away from AI for a little bit, but I want to go behind the scenes for a couple of minutes, specifically focusing on that expansion that we sort of talked to a little bit earlier and design overall. So first on expansion in 2015, Viking moved from just river cruising to oceans as well, and then in 2022 to expedition voyages. Now, the customer sees that expansion, I'm going to put myself in the shoes of a customer, sees that expansion as, "Hey, this is a new opportunity to go to a new place that maybe I haven't gone before." That's how the customer sees it. But of course, there are so many minute details and discussions behind the scenes that make it so that the customer can feel that way and also make this new expansion all that it is before it even goes out to purchase, before you even advertise it to customers.

How do you work behind the scenes? So take us a little inside baseball. How do you work behind the scenes to ensure there's a level of consistency and an upholding of the standards that have been sort of drilled down, so that any new expansion meets them?

Tor Hagen:

I think it's a very good question. I dare say, as I said, the promise we made, we will continue to obsess about our guests, and we obsess about quality and everybody knows that.

I must say when we start the river cruising or ocean cruising, I think it's important to start with one thing and make that perfect. And then all you do after you have made that perfect is you do a cookie cutter of it. And we have a huge advantage in our fleet. We have some 80 odd river ships and they're pretty much identical. You can't really tell the difference from one to the other. So the differences are the places you go to. We have the same philosophy on the ocean ships. They're virtually identical and you feel at home. You know exactly where things are. And we take care of lots of the small things which other people don't really think about. We stay at a great hotel in the neighborhood here, but small things like you get into the shower and then you have three bottles. One is shampoo, one is conditioner, and the third one is-

Lance Glinn:

Body wash, soap?

Tor Hagen:

... soap. Soap, yeah. And the problem is what these people tend to do, the brand of the toiletry is in big print and what is in a bottle is in small print. And very few of us take the glasses with us into the shower.

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

So on Viking's case, we are very practical. The stuff is in it is in big bold letters.

Lance Glinn:

Got it.

Tor Hagen:

So we make it very, very practical, big advantage. We have small things like we don't have bathtubs in the room. Our guests are 55-year-old plus. And when you get to a certain age, you should be careful climbing into and out of bathtubs. And a bathtub takes 6% of the space of a-

Lance Glinn:

Of just a standup shower.

Tor Hagen:

Yeah.

Lance Glinn:

Of a bathroom.

Tor Hagen:

Of the bathroom or the bathtub.

Lance Glinn:

Of the cabin as a whole.

Tor Hagen:

Sorry, the bathtub takes 6%. So then we'd rather take that 6% and either build more cabins. I mean, it doesn't happen like that automatically. It's very important how we deal with space. Our guest, we have a very efficient organization on board. So we have much better economics on both the river ships and the ocean ships than our competitors do. And that allows us to do one or two things or maybe both. First, it allows us to offer a lower price so we get more market share.

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

So we give some to the customer, but secondly, it makes our economics better.

Lance Glinn:

It's a win-win.

Tor Hagen:

It's a win-win. So we take great care and the fact that we then make all these repeat negotiations with the yards. The staff finds themselves immediately on the ship. The guests say, "Oh, this is where things are." So it sounds a bit boring, but other people say it's great fun to have more architects on board." But with us, it's the same carpets on the river ships on the ocean ship. So we try to be rational about things.

Lance Glinn:

Yeah. And it's consistency too at the end of the day as well. It's consistency. And like you said, you take one and you perfect it and then you do it a cookie cutter and you take what you perfected and you move it from one ship to the next to the next to the next. And that consistency, like you said, it helps the staff because they know where everything is. They know around the ship. They don't have to relearn a new ship. It helps the customers who say are going from one destination on one ship to another destination on another. So they understand where everything is. So it just helps everyone to have that consistency.

Tor Hagen:

And above all, you may know, but a big part of our strategy is to be a direct marketing company. We say, our guests can book wherever they want, travel agents, us, whatever, but we like to appeal directly to consumers through our direct marketing. So we have spent, since we started here, I think we spent some $3.6 billion-

Lance Glinn:

Wow.

Tor Hagen:

... on marketing. Nobody comes anywhere near it. And of course, the benefit then in our direct marketing and on our websites, we only have one deck plan. We don't need 80 deck plans for all the ships.

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Tor Hagen:

So you can say that all the elements of the strategy tie together to this.

Lance Glinn:

So Tor, if we were to zoom out and think about the next chapter for Viking, how do you sort of personally define success moving forward? Is it the same definition as maybe when you started Viking 30 years ago or has it evolved?

Tor Hagen:

So on our way here, somebody said, "Okay, what drives you to do this?" It's really one thing. I like to win, and I think winning here means to really have a great product. And I also said, "I like Viking to be a great company." And I said, "What's the definition of a great company?" "Okay. We should be loved by a guest. We should be loved by our staff." And then I say, "We should be..." I don't say hated maybe, "Should be at least feared by our competitors." So those three things, if we can accomplish those three things, then we'll come far. And I think we are pretty much a great company today

Lance Glinn:

Absolutely.

Tor Hagen:

... with the help of the listing we had. And I must say the listing we did here was because of the private equity investors we had. There's one thing which I take great pleasure in because of course they had to sell out at some stage when their funds run out and so forth. They've done well on it, don't get me wrong, but I think I'm delight to say that although they've sold out, they wanted to stay on the board because they think we're a neat little company or neat big company, but a neat company.

Lance Glinn:

So Tor, as we wrap up our conversation, when you think about what Viking has become, not just as a company, but something that you've spent decades building, what do you hope guests, employees, really all stakeholders say about what the brand really represents?

Tor Hagen:

It's somebody we can trust.

Lance Glinn:

Someone you can trust. Tor, thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.

Tor Hagen:

Well, thank you very much.