Vacation retail operator across cruise ships, resorts, and luxury travel experiences
Starboard Group operates duty-free and experiential retail across 90+ cruise ships and land-based resort properties, with a legacy extending back to 1958. The tech stack is enterprise-grade but traditional—SAP + PeopleSoft for backend operations, Active Directory and VMware for infrastructure—reflecting a large, operationally complex retail business. Active projects center on inventory optimization, demand forecasting, and assortment tuning; concurrent pain points (overstocks, SKU management, purchase order challenges, heavy manual data entry) suggest the organization is managing inventory at scale with friction points that could yield to automation or analytics tooling.
Starboard Group is a public company and the world's leading vacation retailer, operating retail environments across more than 90 ships in partnership with 15 cruise lines, plus expanding land-based offerings through Starboard Resort, Starboard Cruise, and a luxury boutique division (Starboard Luxury). The company curates fine jewelry, Swiss watches, beauty, and duty-free merchandise for vacation travelers. Headquartered in Miami with offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Genoa, the organization serves travelers on cruise ships, yachts, and expedition vessels, and increasingly on resort properties. The business also includes Onboard Media, a sister company producing multimedia experiences for travel and hospitality sectors. With 1,001–5,000 employees across multiple geographies, Starboard manages vendor relationships, inventory allocation across distributed locations, and promotional alignment across a global footprint.
SAP and PeopleSoft for core operations, Active Directory and VMware for infrastructure, Python for scripting, and Microsoft Office stack. No recent major tech adoptions or replacements are evident.
Demand forecasting, inventory optimization, assortment tuning, new ship onboarding, margin discipline, and promotional event alignment. Internal challenges center on overstocks, SKU database management, and purchase order workflow friction.
Miami, Florida. The company also maintains offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Genoa, Italy, supporting global cruise ship operations and growing land-based resort retail.
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