Safety at sea
Cruise lines are clearly starting to recognise this, allowing free cancellation if travel bans derail holidays, and offering flexibility around rescheduling. At the same time, they’ve boosted their communications, a crucial measure given the importance of clear messaging in a crisis. With some 63% of people eager for daily updates on Covid-19, operators like Norwegian have taken this principle to extremes, with their ‘Peace of Mind’ campaign even offering to call guests unsure of their next move.
Cruise ships have adopted a range of health and safety measures to protect guests from Covid-19 in shared spaces.
Think about Princess’s CruiseHealth scheme. Some changes – for example installing HVAC ventilation systems that replace air in public spaces every few minutes – are vital weapons in the fight against airborne Covid-19. As a way of promoting physical distancing, ‘TrulyTouchless’ embarkation is useful too. Yet, like many other operators, Princess also focuses on environmental sanitation, proudly proclaiming that it uses disinfectant “proven to quickly kill coronaviruses”.
“My research found many people don’t view themselves as ‘the type of person’ to go on a cruise.”
Dr Jennifer Holland, Suffolk Business School
The irony, of course, is that as an airborne virus, the vast majority of cases spread through particles entering the nose and mouth. According to one expert at UC Berkeley, conversely, transmission via surfaces is extremely low. As environmental engineer Amy Pickering recently put it: “A lot of things have to fall into place for that transmission to happen.”
One in 5,500
The odds of
catching norovirus on a cruise ship, sometimes referred to as the ‘cruise ship disease’.
CLIA 26
Back on the open water To put it another way, while HVAC ventilation is genuinely useful, this focus on sterilisation is probably best understood as a ploy to reassure anxious cruisers. “It really is about the operators taking actions that are perceived by customers as minimising risk,” emphasises Holland. “For consumers, as long as they perceive the measures to work, they will regain confidence in cruising.” Not that customers can be lured back through health measures alone. Risk is a multi-headed beast, Holland explains, adding that reassuring potential cruisers about their bank balances is just as important as giving them clean bills of health.
All this work seems to have paid off, at least for experienced cruisers. As Holland reports, many veterans are keen to set sail again, even if they suffered through quarantine aboard a ship at the start of the pandemic. A more intractable problem, Holland continues, are those people who have never walked a gangplank. Whether it’s because they haven’t experienced all the fun a trip can offer, or else feel uncomfortable adopting the cultural associations of being a cruiser, this group appears more susceptible to the negative press that’s developed since Covid began. To explain what she means, Holland recalls conversations she’s had with non-cruisers over the last several months, with one describing vessels as “giant incubators” and another as “‘petri-dishes”.
Cruise control
It would be wrong, however, to paint that the future of cruising in a negative light – that operators will eventually run out of passengers and have no one to replace them. In part, this is a question of timing. Stories about pandemic-scarred ships may be shocking, but they are unlikely to be around forever. After the Costa Concordia sank off Italy in January 2012, for instance, bookings for future cruises fell over the next few months. But after 90 days, they returned to normal.
There’s little reason to doubt the same will happen again, especially now that cruise operators are far better at reassuring customers, and especially if new variants don’t derail the industry once again. More broadly, Holland wonders whether the manifold reasons that people choose not to go on a cruise will ultimately make health and safety matter less. “My research found many people don’t view themselves as ‘the type of person’ to go on a cruise,” she explains. “This could be because they feel they are not old enough, or don’t want to be seen to be needed to be looked after. They also might reject the group experience and don’t want to be forced into meeting people.” Together with those who are reluctant to book a cruise for environmental reasons, Holland suggests that, for many, Covid-19 is “irrelevant”. The dominant reason that the cruise industry is struggling to find its feet again is, then, perhaps more complex than it first might seem – either way, operators will need to reassure cruisers that they are in safe hands.●
World Cruise Industry Review /
www.worldcruiseindustryreview.com
Shawn.ccf/
Shutterstock.com
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