By Jill Gambon

July 11, 2011—One of Royal Caribbean International cruise line's most popular—and profitable—food and beverage offerings is a soft drink refill package. For a flat fee, passengers on its 22 ships who are lounging by the pool can have as many cups of Coca-Cola and other sodas as they like, without having to handle money. But guests complained they had to stand in line and wait for a bartender to pour the prepaid drinks.

Three years ago, ValidFill, a Sarasota, Fla.-based manufacturer that provides the cruise line's refill mugs, told Royal Caribbean it had a potential solution: a self-service drink dispenser that would use radio frequency identification to control access to the soda. Special plastic cups with RFID tags embedded in the bottom would activate the drink dispenser, allowing qualified guests to help themselves and eliminating long waits at the bar.


Although Royal Caribbean was not using RFID elsewhere in its operations, the idea sounded promising to Bob Midyette, the company's director of fleet beverage operations. "We did not know how to accomplish the self-service objective," he says. "When RFID and its capabilities were presented to us as an early, trailblazing option, we thought it was perfect, although not perfected." (Royal Caribbean has since launched a real-time location system that uses Apple iPhones and Wi-Fi-based RFID tags in wristbands or badges to let guests find members of their party on board a ship.)