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Safety at sea


Restoring the faith


Over the past 18 months, it’s been impossible to avoid Covid-19’s impact on the cruise market, and the rush from operators to promote health and safety. But what’s the actual relationship between the seaborne risk of Covid-19 and what passengers perceive it to be? And how much can cruise companies actually do to restore faith in the industry? Andrea Valentino speaks to Dr Jennifer Holland, an expert in risk perception at Suffolk Business School, to learn more.


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n July 2020, with vaccines a distant dream and lockdowns the order of the day, two of the world’s most powerful cruise operators made a special announcement. As their joint press release explained, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line were teaming up to form a ‘Healthy Sail Panel’. Encompassing specialists from the highest peaks of medical life – including the ex-commissioner of the FDA and an executive vice president at Merck – the panel had hugely ambitious goals. The experts, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian proclaimed, were tasked with nothing less than


World Cruise Industry Review / www.worldcruiseindustryreview.com


“developing recommendations for cruise lines to advance their public health response to Covid-19, improve safety, and achieve readiness for the safe resumption of operations”.


If anything, the Healthy Sail Panel has seeped into every crevice of the industry. At Princess Cruises, for instance, the operator instituted its ‘CruiseHealth’ programme. MSC, for its part, emphasises it was the first operator to “safely return to cruising,” adding that customer health and safety are “of utmost importance to us.” It goes without saying that these broad plans have been


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