Theme cruises have become a significant part of the cruise industry. There are all variety of music cruises; from rock and roll legends cruises, to smooth jazz and blues cruises, to even popular contemporary bands performing on full ship charters to the delight of their fans.

There are culinary themed cruises, featuring up close and personal experiences with some of the world’s more renowned chefs. Wine cruises with lectures and seminars by world class somelliers. There’s also motorcycle cruises, where the guests are encouraged to bring their bikes with them for use in the ports of call. And there’s even Nudist cruises, for those who enjoy wearing only the bare necessisties. Even politics gets into the picture with theme cruises by the right-leaning National Review.

But, I think there’s still some space out there remaining to be filled by some enterprising entrepeneur that could really be fun.

For example:

- Foot Festishists Theme Cruise -  the days could be filled with lectures and seminars by podiatrists; the nights by shoe fashion shows. Everyone would be instructed to toe the line, but they’d have the opportunity to put their best foot forward,   and no doubt a few onboard would step in it.

-Theme Cruise for People Who Think They Look Like A Famous Person – I’ve actually been stopped in an airport and asked if I was Phil Jackson (the famous basketball coach). No doubt there are thousands of people who think they look like someone famous, but really have no resemblance whatsoever to their supposed look-a-like. The days could be filled with game shows of Who The Heck Is That?!

- Pessimests Theme cruise – This one would be so easy to pull off, with daily lectures by everyone who is predicting a date for the end of the world.  Throw in some pool-side games of people guessing what the next bad thing to happen to them will be, and some group discussions of  why people think they are going to die, and you’ve got the potential for a real winner in the category.

You might want to double up on this one and mix the pessimists with hypochondriacs.

- Theme cuise for those with Imaginary Friends – here’s an easy one to make a nice profit at; each passenger would pay full fare for them and their imaginary friend (double occupancy cabins you know). Each night at dinner you’d have everyone at their table introduce their friend, and tell the stories of how they met, and watch for the easily flowing “kuki” conversations.

- Victoria’s Secret Theme Cruises – Easy reasoning on this one. I’m a man!

Give me a shipload of models in garments from Victoria Secret, and I could quit digging through garbage cans for their catalogues.

No doubt I have just scratched the surface of ideas in this realm. Feel free to expand with your ideas for the next big thing in theme cruises.

- A View From The Kuki Side of Cruising -

While every type of business depends on repeat business, I believe there are few with such a loyal customer base as cruising. On virtually every sailing of every ship, there are hundreds and hundreds of people who’ve cruised before; at least several times; often many times.’

Fact is, it is very infrequent passengers disembark a ship feeling as though they didn’t get great value for the money they spent. Aside from the feeling of good value,  there is an intoxicating factor.

How often does one step into a hotel room, and feel they are “home”? Oddly perhaps, it rarely takes long for a cruise ship passenger to enter their cabin, and not have that feeling of “being home” swell. The feeling is not easily defined, nor is it easily explained in words, or scientifically proven. It’s at least partially explainable because when you arrive, and unpack your belongings, your making it0″ your space”, because, though you are traveling, you know this is your home base for the duration of the cruise.

Cruises are made of a number of “moments”.  And so often many of those moments become life long memories which bring a smile to your face each time they cross your mind.

The moment might be a dinner service that goes so smoothly you think you’re dining in your favorite restaurant; or a moment during the meal where you share a taste of a delicious plate of food with your loved one, while sharing a warm, loving and knowing smile. The moment may be during a comedy show, where, while as you are laughing hysterically, you glance over to see your friend, or mate enjoying the time as much as you are.

When you are relaxing on your private balcony, or standing out on an open deck, stairing out for miles into a calm and endless sea, on a star filled night,  suddenly it dawns on you… that is the feeling everyone could feel if there could ever be world peace.

These moments and memories can be different for everyone. It can be everything from your falling asleep during a Broadway-style show,  to zip-lining above a rain forest in a port of call, to your team wining a trivia contest on board, to the wonderful night’s sleep you got as the ship rocked back and forth as it cut through the water.

While cruising may not be right for everyone. The majority of people who try it, do have a desire to do it again.  And it’s most likely the urge will come later, when the memories of those moments pop into your head, and bring a smile to your face; and you again feel intoxicated by the joy of it.

- A View From The Kuki Side of Cruising -

Sometimes the timing of certain decisions in the cruise industry really surprises me. Just as we are beginning to recover from the Concordia accident, which we learned happened largely as a result of a practice called interporting, we hear new announcements from the cruise industry that certain lines plan to increase the number of cruises where interporting takes place.

What is interporting? It is the practice of taking on new passengers in various ports of call along the cruise itinerary. What used to be a singular beginning and ending for all of the passengers on a given cruise itinerary will now be more like a train or hotel where the faces change every couple of days.

For example, a cruise that begins in Barcelona and stops in Marseille and Rome before it is returns to Barcelona will now pick up passengers in Marseille and Rome and keep those passengers onboard until the ship returns to the same port.

This is a very new concept for the mainstream American cruise fleet, although it has been pretty common in Europe for awhile now. Still, I don’t like the idea personally. It is also interesting that the two lines now announcing it are not in the Carnival Corp. family.

Norwegian cruise lines just announced it will start interporting on Norwegian Epic in the 2013 summer season. You will be able to board the ship and Barcelona, Marseille or Rome and stay onboard for seven days. Each passenger will receive a lifeboat drill within a few hours of arrival and before the ship sets sail, according to the new worldwide CLIA policy, which means each passenger will attend one drill and endure the distraction while other passengers have their own drills days later.

Royal Caribbean also announced interporting on its 2,100-passenger Brilliance of the Seas. The ship will embark passengers in Puerto Rico on a series of seven-night Southern Caribbean cruises during the 2012-13 winter season, and also embark and disembark others in Guadeloupe on day four of the cruise. The idea here is to have American and Canadian passengers sailing round trip San Juan and South American cruisers sailing roundtrip from the island of Guadeloupe a few days later.

Actually, I don’t understand exactly why South Americans should prefer Guadeloupe over San Juan since the distance from Caracas to Puerto Rico is about the same as it is to Guadeloupe. Plus, the native language in Puerto Rico is Spanish just as it is in Venezuela, while Guadeloupe is a French-speaking island. They will still have to go through U.S. immigration when the ship hits San Juan, as far as I know, anyway.

So, now we have more ships doing interporting as a regular practice. This means that when you board Brilliance of the Seas in Puerto Rico it will already be inhabited by hundreds of South Americans already half-way though their cruise. Restaurants and spa appointments will already be booked by those onboard before you arrive.

In addition, the South Americans will experience a new influx of passengers in Puerto Rico in the middle of their cruise. And in their case the “English-speaking people” will have already booked up the first half of their cruise with restaurant and spa reservations.

Interporting breaks up the continuity of a cruise. Those cruise rituals we cruisers have come to know and love; the welcome aboard party where new passengers meet the captain and chef, and the farewell celebration towards the end of the cruise will most likely disappear. Otherwise they will become all but meaningless. Embarkation and disembarkation as a procedure will go more quickly with fewer people, but it could also lead to complications for visitors not disembarking in a given port.

I find it interesting that CLIA would make the announcement that muster drill is now mandatory before a ship sets sail to address a problem specifically created by the practice of interporting, only to see cruise lines announce within a few days an increase in the number of cruises where interporting takes place. It seems more logical that the Concordia accident would have compelled the cruise industry to end to the practice.

That’s just the way it is sometimes, but wouldn’t have made sense to at least let the Concordia news die down a little bit before announcing the increase in interporting? I am guessing that the cruise lines have wanted to do this for quite awhile now, but held back due to complications around scheduling muster drills. But now that CLIA has gotten all cruise lines to agree to hold all muster drills the same day they see it as a green light to use interporting as much as they want.

So, who is the winner in any of this? The cruise lines will make more money and it will be more convenient for some people to embark closer to home, but I think it will make the cruise experience far less personal and more like a floating hotel. The biggest losers will definitely be the crewmembers who now have to spend far more time loading and unloading passengers and hosting three life boat drills per cruise.

Winter comes and cruisers minds turn to escaping to the warmth of the Caribbean. That statement has been true for many years, and continues to be true.

The cruise lines continue to bring the majority of their fleets to sail Caribbean itineraries during the winter months, and they continue to sail full, even with the growing numbers of ships in those fleets.

Almost every day multiple ships are tying up at piers or anchoring off of small islands throughout the Caribbean, delivering thousands of people to the area. However, there seems to be a growing tide; cruise ship passengers staying onboard during ports of call rather than touring the islands and booking other excursions.

It used to be, if you happened to stay on board the ship while in port, you were pretty much the only ones on board other than crew who were working.

These days it seems many more people are no longer cruising to visit the islands. The growing primary intent seems to be to enjoy the warmth of the Caribbean, but not the islands. A growing preference to simply enjoy it while staying on the ship. In addition there are more people who may disembark the ship in port for only a couple of hours; long enough to do a bit of shopping, and head back to the ship before lunch.

There is most likely a variety of reasons these people are deciding to stay on the ship , or quickly return to  the ship.

- One reason may be the fact these often small islands are being flooded with tourists. With multiple ships in port, many days the ships are dropping 10,000 -12,000 passengers onto an island where the infrastucture is incapapble of handling the crowds well.

- There is a segment of cruisers who cruise only in the Caribbean; some of this is due to the move to homeport cruising and their desire to avoid flying anywhere.

After multiple visits to the same islands, these people take a “been there, done that” attitude, and choose to remain on the ship.

- Another segment feel that since they have already pre–paid their food costs in their cruise fare, and therefore, even if they leave the ship for a short time, they should return to the ship by meal time, rather than pay extra for food in the islands.

- Over recent years the cruise line’s newer ship have added amenities and activities which make them more like land based resorts; adding water parks, flow riders, even ziplines, and rope courses. Making many of the activities available in the island port redundant in the minds of many cruisers.

The type of people who enjoy resort vacations, and land based all-inclusives, are very likely never to leave the property. That same attitude is becoming more common place on cruise ships.

There’s also the segment of cruisers who would prefer the ship  simply sailed out, and spent the entire length of the cruise at sea; enjoying lanquid days floating about. With the excpetion of “special” short voyages to introduce a ship (normally tied to some sort of charity event) cruises to nowhere are not allowed under American law. This results in those people who would prefer cruises to nowhere making them that by ignoring the fact the ship is docked or at anchor at an island.

It is more likely that it’s those people who are repeat cruisers who are choosing to stay on board more often. I think it’s likely first time cruisers will spend their days off of the ship.

No doubt there’s other reasons that this trend is growing, which I haven’t thought of, which our readers can add.

Are you one of the group more likely to stay on your ship while it’s in port, or will you make certain you are off of the ship, to experience as much of every island that you can?

- A View From The Kuki Side of Cruising -

On Jan. 26, 2012, in the United States, it became law that in the interests of public transparency, airlines publish pricing which includes all taxes.

This law allows the people searching for airfares to see the total costs, rather than the airlines promoting seemingly low  fares,only for the consumer  to find the actual total cost to be considerably higher.

From the consumers point of view, I imagine most of us would like to see cruise pricing handled in the same way.

The situation with the manner in which cruise pricing is presented and promoted has improved in recent years.

 In the past, cruise pricing was more complex.  When you saw an advertised cruise price, and it interested you, once you called to book, you’d find the advertised price did not include port charges or government taxes ,then referred to as non-commissionable costs. The term non-commissionable costs was really just important to travel agents, as it meant they weren’t being paid a commission of that portion of the total cruise fare their customers were paying.

Customers thought the “port charges” portion of the fare referred to the costs cruise lines were being charged by the ports of call they were visiting, but to the cruise lines it became a vessel to dump all sorts of costs of their operations into, to eliminate paying their travel agent partners commissions on those costs.

At this time, however, most cruise lines are publishing and advertising fares which include the port charges. Most also require the travel agents they work with to advertise their fares the same way. But, they also state “government fees and taxes are additional”. Thus the advertised price you might see is still not truly your final cost as a consumer.

Now that the U.S. airlines have been forced to offer prices inclusive of taxes, one might think the cruise lines should follow suit. As I stated, as consumers of the cruise product we’d all like to see or hear the “bottom line” when asking for a quote on a cruise.

As this new law took effect, a member of the House of Representatives is already presenting legislation to repeal the law, and several airlines have filed suit in Federal Court on constitutional grounds.

I have no thoughts on the constitutionality of the law, but frankly I believe there is some seemingly reasonable concern to their objections to the law.

Their argument is this law requires the taxes to be hidden in the costs of the ticket, and those taxes could be increased by the government, without the customer knowing the increase in the fares was due to the tax increase. At initial glance, that does seem like a reasonable objection.

There seems to be a simple solution.  Why can’t they advertise the total price, adding… this fare includes taxes of ”$X” ? As could the cruise lines simply reverse their description; rather than saying the price does not include government fees and taxes, they could say… this fare includes government fees and taxes of “$X”.

However, like most things in life, nothing is that simple.

In pretty much every other thing consumers purchase government fees and taxes are not included in the advertised price.  When shopping in department stores the price tags do not include taxes; when eating in a restaurant the menu pricing does not include taxes; when purchasing an automobile the price tag does not include taxes; when booking a hotel room the price does not include taxes.

Basically the full price of your purchase does not appear until you are paying, or about to decide to pay. Why do we expect the airline (and possibly cruise) business to be different?

Simple – because it would be more convenient.

As you can see, the issue is complex enough that I can have a pretty good arguement with myself. What do you think?

- A View From The Kuki Side of Cruising -

Two Manhattan-based law firms vowing to defend all of the victims of the Concordia disaster may face hurdles in bringing a class action lawsuit to the U. S. court system. The two firms are (1) Proner and Proner, and (2) Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik LLP. Michael Bern filed a lawsuit for six passengers against Carnival Corporation, parent company of ship owner Costa Cruises, in a Miami court demanding $460 million in compensation on Saturday.

But these vociferous lawyers may be facing a Herculean battle if previous cruise line adjudication is any indication. To help clarify the situation, I spoke to Jerry Hamilton of Hamilton, Miller & Birthisel, a law firm specializing in maritime law in Florida.

The main challenge to these New York-based lawyers is the cruise ticket, which contains very specific limitations on the right to sue a cruise line. Boarding a cruise ship requires far more than a token to show you paid the fare. Your cruise voucher is actually a finely crafted legal contract, filled with some surprising and even arcane restrictions in fine print which many cruise plaintiff attorneys (those who sue cruise lines) feel are egregiously one-sided in favor of the cruise line. Unfortunately, most passengers never even read them unless something goes wrong.

The first hurdle these law firms face is the venue. The Costa cruise ticket states that Genoa, Italy, must be the venue for any lawsuit for any cruise originating from any port other than the United States, even though Costa is one of many cruise lines belonging to parent company Carnival Corp., which is headquartered in Miami.

Plaintiff attorney Mitchell Proner, on a public interview by the Miami ABC affiliate television station, said he hope to get a change of venue because parent company Carnival Corp. is based in Miami. Citing a legal concept called Forum Non Conveniens he implied that a company that earned $14.5 billion, sitting in the heart of Miami, should be able to be sued in Miami.

On the other hand, Miami maritime lawyer Hamilton pointed out to me that Forum Non Conveniens is decided based upon several distinct variables; (1) where the victims are located, (2) where the incident occurred and (3) where the evidence is located. He said that Carnival Corp. could be sued in Miami, but that it seems unlikely to be allowed in this case because Carnival is the holding company, not the company who owned the ship.

The two New York law firms hope to form a class action lawsuit for as many Concordia victims as they can find; and Proner stated he has people from Italy and every place from Peru to Shanghai. However, according to Hamilton Forum Non Conveniens would apply to American victims. And when it comes to where the incident happened and the location of the evidence; Italy is the only logical answer.

Other Legal Arguments
Perhaps even more pertinent to this case is a famous (in cruise circles, anyway) 1991 U.S. Supreme Court case; Shute vs. Carnival Cruise Lines. That decision said venue restriction in the cruise contract is fully legal. In fact, many things regarding the cruise contract were decided in that case.

Proner also hopes to pierce the cruise contract by bringing up the fine print issue. He said in the same interview that no one reads the fine print on a cruise ticket and no one should be expected to read it. I would likely agree with him on that, but once again; Shute vs. Carnival Cruise Lines. That case decided the cruise contract was not only printed in legible type, but that the language is clear and concise enough to be understood by the party signing the agreement.

Note; you can read the Costa Cruises cruise ticket contract here.

http://www.costacruise.com/B2C/USA/Support/contract/contract.htm

The next challenge to the idea of a class action law suit to represent all of the Concordia victims is the definition of a class action lawsuit. Proner said he hopes to get about 125,000 Euros for emotional suffering for each victim, three to four times that amount for those who were physically injured and millions for the families of those who died or are missing.

Once again Hamilton points out that by definition a class action lawsuit must represent a class of victims that suffered fundamentally the same injury, so it does not make sense to have emotional, physical and other sufferers in the same class action suit. Most likely the suit could not be brought as a class action.

Proner also said that if he could not establish a class action suit he would take on individual cases. “If you go there,” said Hamilton, “you come right back to the passenger ticket issue; meaning venue and other restrictions.” On the other hand, Hamilton did suggest that if a victim were to call Costa, he surmises the line would be more than happy to discuss the issue. 80% to 90% of all lawsuits, including maritime, end up being settled.

In the end Hamilton pointed out something that made a lot of sense. There is no greater concentration of maritime lawyers anywhere than in Miami, yet not one Miami lawyer is trying to do what these New York lawyers are trying to do. Of the better known Miami lawyers I am personally familiar with, only one has sued Costa, and he did it in Genoa.
“Furthermore, Italy has plenty of lawyers, some of which have also sued Costa,” said Hamilton.

Other Cruise Ticket Restrictions
While the conditions of the cruise ticket are arguably one-sided, there is nothing inherently illegal about them. But surprisingly many aspects of cruise tickets are based not on U.S. law, but rather upon international treaties and maritime law comprising a system of legal jurisprudence outside of U.S. law.

For example, there is the Athens Agreement, an old (1974) and often amended international treaty which limits the liability of a cruise line in cases of injury and loss of property (combined) to about $70,000 per person.

Then there is the “Death on the High Seas Act” which limits liability for loss of life to the amount a wage earner would have earned in his lifetime, and that is only available to immediate family. The DOHSA came into play with the BP Gulf oil rig disaster, and interestingly it is a United States law, and Hamilton told me it is quite possible that Italian law may be more beneficial to the families of those who died.

Bottom Line – Cruise Contracts
Now, to be clear, Carnival Cruise Lines is separate from Carnival Corp. Carnival Cruise Lines is just one of many separate and distinct cruise lines, separately incorporated, that are in the Carnival Corp. holding company, which also includes Princess, Holland America, Seabourn, and Cunard. The Concordia event involved Costa Cruise Lines, incorporated and sailing in Europe with mostly European passengers.
The bottom line is that these are very complicated legal matters and I am not an expert. The law is full of surprises and loopholes. If any experts out there care to weigh in there is a comment section below. If you have any other cruise questions email me at editor@cruisemates.com.

Cruising as a travel option still has a far better safety record than driving or flying.

The Costa Concordia tragedy has received an amazing amount of media attention, which comes as no surprise. The major consumer news media believe that a “newsworthy” story requires emotional impact, conflict, loss of life/property and/or novelty. This story has all of those elements – but it especially excels in the “novelty” category.

The Concordia story is especially compelling for the visual medium of television news, because we have never seen a modern cruise ship lying on its side before. While watching one cable news anchor doing a tease about an upcoming Concordia story, they showed the clip of the ship lying on its side for the thousandth time — but this time the anchor could clearly be heard mumbling to the director’s booth, “now cue it up again…”

That was a glimmer of acknowledgement from a real reporter that he knows when a story is being overplayed. The Concordia event was not overplayed at first, for as long as they stuck to the incident itself, but when the media started looking for evidence of malfeasance in the cruise industry’s past and reporting every little event as proof of a “cancer on the cruise industry,” it became too much.

Loss of life is always a tragedy, but did the media really seem concerned with finding out how many people were dead or missing, or their names, or whether they were crew or passengers? Not really — which is odd when you consider that most “tragedy” news stories begin with the number of dead or missing.

In this case, the lost souls were somehow an afterthought and the “story” was more about the captain, who was accurately reported to be a “coward” and has already been the subject of headlines like “Chicken of the Sea” and “Cap’n Crunch.” The media zoomed in on Captain Schettino’s actions to portray him as the villain he proved to be. I am not disputing that, but were his actions really more important than the people who are still missing, or those who survived, or the heroic efforts of the divers working on rescue?

Reporters who researched the numbers in their Concordia stories could have let people know that cruising is still the safest form of travel by far compared to flying or especially driving. I did hear it mentioned only once or twice, but in respect for the facts, wouldn’t it have been far more accurate to lead each story with, “in what is normally one of the safest vacations experiences possible, something extraordinary caused a cruise to go horribly wrong?” But instead a number of news organizations did their best to drum up other stories of untimely or negative cruise events. Obviously, they were hoping to find more “Cap’n Crunch” tales. With every big cruise event I get calls from major media asking me about “the hidden cruise world” that they somehow believe exists even though they have been covering the cruise industry themselves for years now, they don’t correlate the concept that if they have not had that much to report there must not be that much bad stuff going on.

In the worst reports, we heard the inevitable tales of people going “missing” at sea – with no mention of the fact that in nearly every such case, the leading national investigative body — the U.S. FBI – has determined that no foul play was involved.

While Concordia is a tragedy, there are few incidents in life where one can use the phrase “the exception that proves the rule” and truly mean it – but this is one.

Eighteen million people cruised in 2011, hundreds of millions (more than the population of the United States) have cruised the modern American cruise ships since the industry started and only in a handful of cases has anyone lost a life due to the negligence or malfeasance of a cruise line.

I don’t want to minimize the roughly 40 lives lost in the Concordia incident. In fact, I want to emphasize that number – because in context with the travel industry at large, it is comparatively small. Cruise ships commonly carry from 3,000 to more than 8,000 people (crew and passengers) on every cruise. Concordia is by far the worst accident in modern cruise history, an industry that was new in the 1960s and has grown steadily every year to become a $35 billion business in annual revenues. The loss of 40 people is horrible, but how many die on our highways every year? Even if you match it on a “per 1,000 passengers” basis, the odds are still vastly worse for driving, or flying, than for cruising.

So why is this story getting so much media coverage? I said it above: It’s the novelty of the situation — the fact that a modern cruise ship has never had such a tragic loss of life, and that no captain has ever abandoned a ship in a life or death situation. But the novelty of the situation has barely been mentioned by the major news media – the very fact is that there are so few “life or death” incidents in the cruise industry where every soul was not eventually saved for the last 30 years is a concept that is just “lost” in the mind of the media.

The fact is that there are no fully safe vacations, yet no one mentions the percentage of traffic-related deaths or plane crashes that happen yearly before a friend embarks on one of those vacations. When it comes to cruising the news media has always proven itself more than ready to report the worst possible scenario first, and then clarify the record later — after the fact, and only if it is convenient or necessary.

On a personal note I want to say one thing; as a travel writer I am no fan of “fluff” reporting. I see it all too often, especially in magazines geared toward travel sellers. I believe there are far too many stories distributed to travel agents almost like “talking” points for particular travel experiences, and cruising is certainly one of them.

But in this case I am speaking as a cruise industry reporter who sees the underbelly and knows the nuts and bolts of the industry and still finds reasons to love it. I have been reporting on cruising for so long that I am now inured to the pervasive anti-cruise bias that exists in some people. I don’t even bother to try to change anyone’s mind about cruising anymore. It’s like politics – people will listen to what they want to believe – and most of them don’t even want to hear the other side. There is no concern with “perspective” or “context” in the news media anymore.

So – here is the balanced opinion of the Concordia incident. It is a tragedy, but the story has legs mostly because cruise ships are beautiful, vastly complicated wonders of technology, similar to the Space Shuttle. But when we lost our Space Shuttles the people onboard were heroes. When after all of these years we finally lose our first cruise ship, the crewmembers are useless, the operators are conspiratorial cowards and the lost passengers are victims.

It’s funny how the media can choose any angle it wants – and it picks its favorites and crucifies the rest.

Note : This blog post (below)  was written prior to the Costa Corcordia tragedy, and originally intended to run last week. I held it back a week because I felt I had to consider what, if any, hand the general topic of the blog could have had during the Concordia incident.

As the cruise industry has grown, and spread it’s ships throughout the word, it is my hypothesis that a new problem has shown up; lack of training.

On the “mass market contemporary” cruise lines, some cruise lines are even leaving the training of their service staff to outside contracted companies, followed by further training once they are on board in their working environments.

At the same time, other than the luxury lines, the cruise lines have cut back on the ratios of staff members to paying passnegers. Combining the factors of lack of advance training, with the larger numbers of passengers they are expected to service, in my view has led to drop in almost all levels of service. All of this further affected by the ever growing demand for staff to man the growing fleets.

It’s not that the service staff aren’t doing their utmost in an effort to please the passengers (and their employers), but it seems the processes are sort of set up to lead them to being unable to succeed in delivering a level of service once commonplace.

Add untrained passengers to the mix, and it rather naturally leads to some levels of dissatisfaction by everyone concerned.

I’m not suggesting passengers should be required to take classes to learn what is expected of them as a passenger, or what they should have a right to expect from their service staff as a passenger.

However, there are so many resources, like CruiseMates.com available for cruise passengers to familiarize themselves with cruising, ports of call they are going to visit, finances involved, dress, and shipboard activities. Yet, like cruising itself, where a small percentage of the population even goes on a cruise, the percentage of those who do cruise but do so with no effort to learn about what they are getting themselves into is also disproptionally high.

I’d guess the percentage of cruisers researching is similar to the percentage of people who cruise vs those who don’t. And, in some cases, those who take the time to “study” may end up at some sites, where the “experts” turn out to be vitriolic and annoyed by questions, or when their responses are questioned. The amount of misinformation passed around on some sites only adds to the problem; not dissimilar to when service staff aren’t trained properly.

It’s an odd phenomena, as the cruise lines have been doing quite an admirable job of designing and engineering gorgeous ship, filled with an ever growing list of amenties, as well as upgrading the entertainment and dining choices on their ships. Yet, as they improve in the areas they are directing their concentration to, they seem to slip in other areas; unable to keep the entire package to equal standards.

At least training service staff could be managed with much more dedicated training. I’m unsure of exactly how they go about training the passengers better, but certainly the travel agents should take that responsibility more seriously, rather than concentrating only on the sale.

That was the extent of the blog I had intended to publish last week.  Now with the Concordia event of Fri 13th I find I must add some thoughts in relation to the Costa Concordia incident.

I have to admit I do feel as if the situation of under-trained staff  (in all areas, not just service staff– which was the part of the equation I originally chose to address in the blog) does allow for the possibility that the cruise ship environment is perhaps not as safe as those of us in the industry wish to believe it is.

Perhaps those of us who are historically supportive of the cruise industry have minimized some of the previous safety “incidents” as anecdotal, which could have done as much disservice to the industry and our readers, as those who have historically been, and continue to be, overly critical , and sometimes sensationalistic, with their negative commentary of the industry.

In the aftermath of this terrible tragedy, which certainly leaves a mightmarish image in our minds after viewing pictures and video of a modern cruise ship laying on her side, we should at least be considering and discussing what actions should be taken to improve the safety on board for both passengers and crew.

That thought leads me back to my premise in the original blog I wrote and delayed publishing; better training and much improved information sharing is essential for both crew and passengers!

 

- A View From The Kuki Side of Cruising -

I originally wrote a blog on a different topic for today, but due to the tragic events involving the Costa Concordia this past week, I’ve chosen to lighten the subject matter of my blog this week.

So, let’s talk about the “Cruise Cult”.

I think it would most certainly be wrong to have thousands of members of the cult, dressed in plaid shorts, sandles, and loud Hawaiian shirts, adhorned with 3 cameras hanging around their necks, standing at airport entrances, attempting to hand out cruise brochures to everyone entering an airport terminal.

That’s so “been done” by previous cultists.

The cruise lines themselves do a reasonably good job of promoting their industry, but they don’t really seem to account for the atitude of the true cultists; those amongst us who revere a cruise above any other vacation; those of us whose minds turn to thoughts of rebellion, when even a family member suggests an alternate form of vacation.

Those of us truly devoted to cruising must come up with a strategy built for the 21 st centry to enable us to bring the millions of  the uninitiated into the fold.

Last centuries strategy of extoling the virtues of food being available 24/7 to the percentage of the population already overweight proved effective for it’s time.The incredible momentum by the cruise lines of late to paint a cruise as an ultimate family vacation, leaves the door wide open for the truly dedicated to reel in the converts by telling them the truth about a cruise as a family vacation.

 To hook em you don’t want to be telling them about all the great family” together time” they’re going to have on a ship. For “today’s parent” you want to stress how much time they can enjoy away from their children on a ship; how they are free to lay all of the responsibility for their children’s enjoyment and actions (and blame) on the ship’s youth counselors.

Today’s society is as selfindulgent as any in history, so it’s particularly easy to convert people to cruising by pointing out that nearly any selfindulgent activity they enjoy on land is available on a cruise ship.

To those who were part of the “Theme Park Cult”, it’s easy to point out that many of today’s contemporary ships pretty much have a version of their theme park favorites on ships. On various ships now, everything from surfing on flow-riders, ziplinng, waterparks, and state fair style candies and foods can be found if they pick the right ship.

These days many well known contemporary entertainers are being showcased on ships. And it’s easy to point out to the enetertainment buffs that booking a cabin immediately below or above a showroom will allow them to hear their favorite acts multiple times without ever entering the showroom.

There truly is a multitude of ways to draw people who, until now have refused to cruise. But we should realize the unintended consequence of our actons; the more people we draw into our world of cruising, the higher the demand; the higher the price goes.

As a result of our success, drawing people into the cult we may make it too costly for us to indulge our own addiction.

- A View From The Kuki Side of Cruising -

We now know the ship DID hit the rocks during the sail-by just outside the two Le Scole reef islands. This did NOT seem likely earlier since no one reported the damage when it occurred – highly unusual. In fact, nailing down the timeline in this incident has been the hardest part.

According to Costa the captain was on the bridge at the time the rock was hit. But the captain stated the first night that he went up to the bridge 40 minutes later and “discovered the ship was badly off course”. This makes no sense as a declaration if he obviously knew the ship made the close sail-by to Giglio Oporto and the ship was returning to its regular course to reach Savona.

But the captain apparently decided for then (40 minutes later) for the first time that since the ship had a huge hole in its port side – that he should return to Giglio Oporto. The captain dropped anchor and turned the ship around.

The ship was then headed back to the pier at Giglio Oporto. But the question is why a Mayday was not raised much sooner so boats on the island could be made ready to pick up passengers if the ship had to stop and begin evacuation procedures. For that matter – a Mayday should have been sounded the moment it was known the ship had hit a rock – on the sail-by much earlier that night.

Costa said this morning that the captain called the Costa land marine department at 10:05 Italy time. This seems to be just after the time of the beaching and probably just before he left the ship.

But that was not the most serious problem – the worst part was the actual beaching of the ship on the island before it could reach the pier in Giglio Oporto. This made the ship evacuation nearly impossible due to the list to starboard – away from the side of the initial damage.

Was the beaching a mistake – or did the captain feel the ship was sinking? It seems most likely it was a mistake – but was the ship mechanically compromised – or was he really that bad at steering the ship? It should be noted that beaching a ship is a common procedure to keep it from sinking. But in this case it was not a clean beaching – it does not seem to be intentional.

Now to the crew and life boat drill.

All crewmembers on any ship are assigned to a life drill station – their job is to direct passengers to their own assigned lifeboats. The problem in this situation was that half of the lifeboats were incapacitated because of the list. The question is whether or not officers took over once the captain left and made decisions regarding life rafts and the use of the existing life boats. We have no reports of anyone on the navigational staff (after the captain left the ship early) of being on the scene. But it seems as if someone must have taken over.

The main problem in this situation is that Costa is marketed to the pan-European market to offer cruises in five languages simultaneously, or consecutively as the case may be. Much of the panic and confusion before “abandon ship” was sounded had to do with the fact that there were so many passengers who only spoke their native languages; Italian, German, French, Spanish or English – plus possible other languages; Scandinavian, Portuguese (Brazilians), Russian, etc.

Every crew is trained to perform their duties on a stable ship – not a crippled one. This case required extreme measures and someone trained in all aspects of lifeboats to take over the evacuation. It appears someone did take over since over 4000 people were evacuated within two hours, but Costa has not identified who was in command during the evacuation. It would be nice to know.

It has already been noted that this ship board passengers in four different ports of call every week on this itinerary. The 696 who were boarded in Civitavecchia had not been given a lifeboat drill since more passengers were scheduled to board in Savona the next day – and so the drill for all of Friday’s passengers had not been held at the time of the accident.

Finally – what should have happened. The protocol of cruise ships these days is to use the “ship as the lifeboat” – if the ship had been stopped as soon as the initial damage occured everyone could have been evacuated with no loss of life or property. A mayday should have been sounded immediately.