There is a militant cohort of people who would prefer if cruise ships didn’t exist with their collective, narrow focus lens only taking in the bad stuff, like the incidence of norovirus on the ships, the dumping of bad waste into the sea and the smuts that can be seen forming a hazy cloud above a ship.
This militant cohort doesn’t look beyond the outward symbols of bad as they think they are Erin Brockovich, Ralph Nader and Rachel Carson all rolled into one, as they set about to trash even the most innocuous posts about cruising on social media and try to sway public opinion by writing and supporting sensationalist stories in the mainstream media. We’ve all suffered their disapproval, and have the bitten, scarred tongues to prove it.
What makes me particularly sad and frustrated is that the cruise industry doesn’t invest enough in refuting the critics’ claims, with I guess the reason being that the cruise lines believe that the sheer joy of cruising, the dream-making, will win out. No doubt this is a true belief, given that cruising has continued to grow and grow, at least until this pause, this Covid-19 era, with now, cruise ships have taken centre stage as one of the leading evils, as the prime breeding ground for Covid-19 and cruising has come to a halt.
All sorts of scenarios are running through my mind to try to respond to this negativity. It might just come down to a very simple, and perhaps slightly obtuse (at least in this context) saying: ‘My enemy is my friend.’ Maybe this militant cohort, the muckrakers, have done us a favour?
Maybe they are indeed our friend, because they have told us what they think is wrong, paving the way for us to refute their negativity. They certainly have made me think more seriously about what Covid-19 means for cruise tourism.
My take? We need to shift their lens.
This isn’t a story about cruise ships, it is a story about a pandemic. This is equally not, at least in the first instance, an economic crisis, it is a public health one, with that pivot telling us a lot and how we should proceed.
In the first instance, cruise ships did not invent Covid-19. In fact, the incidence of cases of passenger and crew cruise ships is actually miniscule.
On 24 April 2020, The Miami Herald reported that there were 2,787 cases onboard the ships.
On that same date, Johns Hopkins University reported that the number of worldwide cases surpassed 2.6 million.
In other words, cruise ships account for only one thousandth of all cases as at the end of April.
Sure, no one knows for sure how many cases there really were on the ships, but nor is it known how many are active onshore. Here’s an intriguing statistic: one US aircraft carrier alone – the Theodore Roosevelt – reported more than 900 cases while other US Navy ships are also reporting cases.
So, what about nursing and rest homes, where the numbers are very, very scary. What about prisons, aircraft, boarding schools… all of these institutions are spaces of containment, where viruses are known to flourish if robust health and sanitation procedures are not followed.
As it turns out, cruise ships are held to an extremely high standard of safety, health and sanitation. All of us are aware of trigger events like the sinking of the Titanic (resulting in the creation and implementation of SOLAS), and the high profile intervention of the CDC in requiring high standards of cleanliness.
Sure, not all cruise ships adhere equally, but sadly, we only hear about the bad stories, not the good stories.
It is here where we need to start refocusing the lens of those whose mission it is to criticise cruise ships.
For example, what has happened, and with dizzying speed over the past weeks?
The cruise lines have come up with health and safety regimes which, I dare say, would rival any space of containment onshore. Pre-boarding health checks, increasing laundry temperatures onboard, deep cleaning of passenger cabins and no more free-for-all buffets are just some of the protective health measures being put into place.
So, in this sense, the presence of a threat has proven to be a good thing – continuous, fast-paced improvement in the face of a global health crisis.
It is time to tell this story so that its lessons can be applied in other sectors as well and it is not just a story about cruise ship practices, it is a story about how all spaces of containment should respond to major public health crises.
Before I move off this point, however, here is an example which solidly illustrates my point about the attitude of cruise line critics.
Emirates Airline’s announcement that it would require all passengers to have an instant Covid-19 test before boarding was met with fanfare and flourish across the world, but noone used that announcement as an excuse to criticise airpcraft as a ‘bad’ mode of travel.
Write a Facebook post about the health and safety advancements undertaken by the cruise industry, and disparagement has no bounds.
The next focal plane in our new lens to address is the political response.
We have seen instances over the past months where politicians and their bureaucracies engaged in blame-shifting and point-scoring concerning the disembarkation of passengers into local communities.
In addition, inflammatory lip service was sometimes paid by the politicians to the plight of crew onboard the passenger-less ships, calling them ‘imprisoned’ and ‘badly treated’ (their take on the fact that the cruise lines were following best practice, isolating crew on the ships).
With respect to the first observation, cruise ships are not and should never become political footballs – especially not in times like this. Instead, lessons learned from process failures should be transformed into robust codes to be agreed not just by the cruise industry (e.g. SOLAS and MARPOL) nor just by onshore agencies (e.g. a destination’s health ministry or department).
Instead, codes – not dictatorial regulations – should be agreed in partnership with all affected parties, with the inclusion of appropriate expert advice. Now is not the time for confrontation, public displays of power or rancor.
It is, instead, a golden time for collaboration; recognition of the social, economic and environmental contributions which each party can make; and respect for individual views. These are values that are not the sole domain of the cruise lines in the face of a pandemic but should be adopted by all stakeholders in relation to any issue of public policy.
With respect to the second observation, i.e., ‘inflammatory lip-service,’ that, too, needs to change. Again, this isn’t an issue just about the cruise lines and their ships, but about how the rest of the world perceives anything it doesn’t completely understand. Sadly, the cruise industry doesn’t adequately convey its good work, onboard or onshore.
Onboard, good stories range from the ships’ exemplary and innovative efforts to make the ships more environmentally sustainable to caring crew who go far beyond their jobs to embrace passengers as family, forging life-long friendships. Onshore, the cruise lines contribute to social institutions such as schools, charities and orphanages. Discuss any of this on social media or through the mainstream media? The critics will though find a dark-side and denigrate even the most admirable activities and actions.
Very much related to this point is how the media – and politicians – frame stories about the cruise lines and their ships. Language such as ‘crew imprisoned in their rooms’ (quarantine requirements); passengers ‘stuck’ on ships; ‘the last cruise ship on Earth; and ‘captive cruise ship staff beg to be arrested’ needs to change. Politicians, and local community stakeholders, tend to absorb this language, leading to inaccurate portrayals of the situation which mask the issues which really need to be addressed.
The cruise lines need to take assertive stance to refocus the critics’ lens. First, the cruise lines need to tell the stories of their good works, and their exemplary crews. Over recent years, the cruise lines have begun to embrace social media, including blogs on their own sites, but much more needs to be communicated. There are many channels which the cruise lines can use to disseminate their good stories.
Secondly, and perhaps more critically, the cruise lines need to find a way to shed the public perception that the cruise lines are arrogant and hold boundless power. Instead, they need to engage more with the local communities they visit. Port agents, cruise associations and local cruise committees currently engage in dialogue, but local politicians and community leaders and representatives also need to be included. Ill-informed perceptions conveyed by politicians during informal live press conferences on social media platforms need to be corrected.
Dialogue is the best way to correct these perceptions , dialogue which should be initiated by the cruise lines and embrace not just the local cruise fraternity, but also local decision-makers and leaders from government, the wider business community and residents.
No one will argue with the proposition that the world has changed, and cruising along with it, but, as we have seen since the very beginnings of passenger ship travel, the industry continues to adapt to change, change brought about by global events such as war, economic downturns, terrorism and pandemic.
In fact, the cruise lines are one of the great crisis survivors of all time, with wartime seeing luxury liners turned into troop carriers while economic downturns have seen creative creative pricing strategies leading to huge growth in the industry. Terrorism has seen the implementation of highly sophisticated ship and passenger security measures, as well as the establishment of new ports close to where passengers live.
Earlier in this article, I mentioned the cruise lines’ proactive work to expand their health and safety regimes in response to the current health crisis. However, today, adaptation can and should go beyond the immediate needs of managing a health crisis. For those who dream about the future, it can provoke some blue-sky thinking. This future needs to start with financial and social responsibility necessity – and a further opportunity to refocus the critics’ lens.
A hint can be found in the conversion of luxury liners to troop ships in wartime. Today, the media is full of stories of cruise ship parking lots off the coasts of Mexico, the Philippines and other hospitable, safe harbours. The headlines and their stories are once again, predictably hostile. Compare: stories about aircraft parking lots in deserts and abandoned airports compel sympathy for the mothballed airplanes. Moreover, positive stories are now beginning to emerge about the airlines re-purposing at least some of their mothballed capacity by carrying more and more cargo, even in empty passenger cabins.
The cruise lines are in an even better position to repurpose their fleets. Cruise ships’ potential goes far beyond the airlines’ shift to carrying more cargo. As obvious as this next statement it is, it makes financial and social sense and engenders some near-term blue-sky thinking: ‘People can, and want, to live on cruise ships – and do.’ Cruise ships parked offshore, with minimal contact with virus-exposed land, make fantastic floating institutions of all sorts. As governments wrestle with the logistics of mass-quarantining of inbound air passengers, cruise ships can make ideal quarantine facilities for international ports-of-entry situated in coastal cities.
Even airports could avail themselves of such facilities – Manila’s international airport has had to close for several days to manage the throughput of Filipinos arriving back, dealing with the logistics of testing, quarantine and onward travel. The proximity of the airport to the harbour makes the ships perfect quarantine facilities. It is inevitable, though, that a new wave of criticism will result.
That should not discourage the cruise lines from repurposing their ships, though, even if only during the pause to try to recoup revenue lost from leisure cruisers.
There are many other possible uses, temporary uses, for cruise ships. Cruise ships are already used as floating universities. What about making them available to schools and universities fearing outbreaks on their land-based campuses? Or, as the weakness in the airline industry may take several years to recover, smaller cruise ships could also double as coastal ferries, offering point-to-point transportation options along with their leisure cruise guests. Longer term, though, I personally hope that the cruise lines re-consider their plans to jettison smaller ships in favour of larger, feature-rich, technologically-flash ships.
Certainly, Covid-19 has caused my lens to refocus, producing an even clearer image of how I perceive cruising. I have never been a fan of overt consumerism or glitz on land, or on the ships. Now, I value small, intimate, ‘learning’ ships even more – for the passengers and crew I meet, and frankly, for the benefits smaller ships can enjoy in terms of the monitoring and management of passenger health and safety. And even this compels a comparison with air travel and how it is perceived. Positive media attention and favourable comments surround recent press coverage about leaving middle seats free, changing the configuration of passenger cabins or installing protective screens. Raise the issue of a preference for smaller ships for any reason on social media? ‘All cruise ships are evil and should be banned.’ Time to re-focus.
I reckon that a recalibration of cruising would not be a bad thing, and indeed, we see it happening. Now, we just need to refocus the lens of the critics. Make them understand that cruising is about making dreams, about pumping billions of dollars a year into local economies, about creating jobs onshore as well as on the ships and about offering a form of tourism that makes travel possible for so many who would find land travel difficult or impossible. Make them understand that cruising is about adaptation and change. Now it is time for the critics to change, to refocus.
First published recently by Dr Wendy London on CruiseBusiness.com
Dr Wendy London is acknowledged as one of the leading cruise tourism experts in both academic and economic development circles. She has written for publication in both the academic and commercial media. In 2018, Wendy completed her PhD on Auckland, New Zealand’s cruise infrastructure development and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Griffith Unviersity (Brisbane). Wendy is a tri-national (US/UK/NZ), having grown up in New Jersey and lived and worked in London, Amsterdam, Melbourne, and now New Zealand for the past 25 years. Prior to pursuing her love of tourism, Wendy was an IT lawyer and also worked in the area of information technology. Wendy and her husband are addicted cruisers, having traveled on 39 cruises to all continents, but New Zealand remains their favourite itinerary.
John Alwyn-Jones, FTS, MIFWTWA
Pulling a lot of long bows there to try and justify the nightmare of being stuck on a giant floating petri dish.
Cruise ships are all very well and good whilst everything is ok. But when it isn’t, who would want to swap places with the passengers of the Diamond Princess and their ordeal imprisoned in windowless cabins for weeks?