Food & beverage
says with a laugh. “There’s constant sanitation of surfaces, with handrails wiped down regularly and staff using tissues to open the doors.” As Wes Cort, vice-president of F&B operations at Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), explains, the focus for cruise lines over the past year has been enhancing health and safety measures that were already in place. “Areas will be cleaned, sanitised and disinfected at an increased frequency,” he says. “This will include the use of electrostatic spray technology, which is a new way to apply disinfectants in less time and with better coverage than traditional cleaning methods. In addition, we will reduce the capacity in all our on-board restaurants to allow for social distancing.” These new protocols were established after consultation with the Healthy Sail Panel, a team of experts with various specialties including public health, infectious diseases and maritime operations, which created a roadmap of best practices for the cruise industry. Royal Caribbean International’s new protocols follow the same recommendations and include making more space between food stations to avoid crowding and reorganising seating arrangements to ensure each group is at least 6ft apart. Like NCL, self-serve stations have been replaced with a new system whereby the crew serves guests. The line will also introduce more single-serve plates and grab-and-go options.
The future of cruise dining is likely to involve more single-serve plates served by the crew, rather than self-service stations.
perhaps with new serving styles, different types of stations and more targeted variety, but it will survive,” she asserts. Many of the changes won’t even be particularly dramatic, for both servers and guests. Some cruise lines had already started to shift to separate food stations rather than one long buffet counter, as well as erecting glass partitions between food and guests. In addition, cruise ships often restrict passengers from serving themselves at the buffet during outbreaks of common illnesses such as norovirus, at which point they also removed highly touched items such as salt and pepper shakers from tables.
“If anybody is apt to handle this type of pandemic, 51% Nielsen Fresh 58
Increase in grab- and-go concepts in the retail sector between 2019 and 2020.
it’s cruise ships,” Casey believes. “They’ve got a bad rap, but they have some of the strictest health and sanitation regulations anywhere, so they’re kind of built for this.” She’s referring to existing protocols such as the jumpsuits and gloves donned by cleaning teams before they scrub the ship’s floors with hot soapy water and diluted bleach solution. “People understand now that soap cleans, and of course we’ve all learnt that bleach is a great sanitiser,” she
Fewer physical touchpoints Casey is convinced that Royal Caribbean won’t be alone in its shift to grab-and-go concepts, which have surged in popularity in the retail environment during the pandemic, up 51% between 2019 and 2020, according to Nielsen Fresh. The on-land hospitality sector has also seen enormous growth in takeaway, with consumers across Europe ordering 57% more meals from Just Eat in the final three months of 2020 than a year earlier, a trend that industry commentators say is unlikely to reverse after the pandemic.
At sea, Casey anticipates more ready-made, grab- and-go options and customisable takeaway dishes, which customers can pick up from the dining room and take to a less crowded area – whether that’s the ship’s deck, their room or out on an excursion. “They don’t necessarily have to be packaged in plastic either,” she stresses. “Ships could use reusable packaging, which can be returned and sanitised. This would tie into their green initiatives.” Covid-19 has also led to significant growth in mobile ordering and contactless payments, with many land- based hospitality operators putting effort and investment into creating an experience that involves fewer physical touchpoints for staff and guests. In the UK, research from Zonal Retail Data Systems showed that the number of contactless food and drinks orders increased from 7.3 million to 13.5 million between July and September 2020, while the QR code as a replacement for a physical menu has been one of the
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