Brave Travelers Wanted: Your Cruise Ship Awaits

by Chris Owen on

Otherwise brave and robust travelers have been having second thoughts about cruise vacations – and rightfully so. The grounding of Costa Concordia, a fire on Costa Allegra not long after and thoughts of the 100-year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic are all valid concerns. Wondering what the experience might be like, we bought a ticket for a ride on Princess Cruises‘ newly remodeled Grand Princess and lived to tell about it.

I know for a fact how very safe cruise vacations are; the numbers speak for themselves. I really do believe that cruise lines value our safety as the number one priority at sea and that only makes sense too. After all, at sea is where the show happens and if they don’t take care of business when completely surrounded by ocean in all directions as far as the eye can see, the future looks grim.

But as much as I love this business, I could not help but look at Port Everglades, full of ships as it commonly is on any given Saturday, a bit differently.

Was I scared to go on a cruise?

No.

Did I have any doubt that Princess would deliver a safe, quality experience?

Absolutely not. They are, after all, the line of the Love Boat.

Still, I was about to board a cruise ship. Every single sailing we had done before this did not have the shadow of a modern day maritime event that seriously flirted with disaster hanging over it. Embarkation seemed normal but I found myself looking closely at procedures and precautions taken by the port authority and cruise line. “Were there always TSA agents present?” I asked myself and could not really remember if there were or not. I was glad to see them hanging around though.

Before boarding we were advised that there would be a mandatory safety drill at 3:15 p.m. That sounded like earlier than normal to me and we framed our early afternoon activities around it, giving that time more attention than on previous sailings in our minds. Unpacking, touring the ship and having lunch – everything seemed normal.

A great deal of attention was given to sanitation procedures, especially in the buffet area where an obvious priority was being placed on good food-handling procedures and eliminating as much opportunity as possible for norovirus situations to happen or get out of control. That made sense after a recent outbreak that caused ships from a number of lines to pump up efforts in that area.

When time came for the safety drill we had already been watching the clock with more interest than on previous sailings and were not surprised to see muster stations fill quickly.

Our safety drill was held in a large public venue, normally used for shows of some sort. We were advised that when the drill began there would be an eight- or nine-minute safety briefing that we should pay attention to.

When that drill started, from the moment it began, those feelings of apprehension that a great many of those on board felt almost instantly went away.

Why? Because when that safety drill started you could have heard a pin drop in that room. The deafening silence was broken only by a small group of teens, probably on a senior trip for spring break. Teens, of course, are indestructible in their minds.

Every single person, and there must have been 300 of them, gave that safety briefing their undivided attention signaling that they understood the importance of it.

Actually listening to the safety briefing as though our lives may depend on the information we were receiving, it was also clearly apparent that the ship was in good hands.

They had a plan on what to do if things went wrong, they knew how to execute it, were practicing part of that plan right then and would be diligent to protect our safety.

No longer were we relying on the undisputed but impersonal statistics of how many millions of people travel safely by cruise ships each year. No longer did we blindly believe it was a safe way to go because we had been on a bunch of cruises and nothing bad ever happened.

When the safety drill was over, the room cleared quickly and passengers went about their business of having a fabulous cruise vacation, whatever that might have meant to each of them. I suspect they might be having an even better time of it too, armed with the truly important information we received that day.

The tragic death of those passengers that did not make it off Costa Concordia will be remembered as a lesson learned by cruise lines, affecting how they do business now and in the future. Still, that event and those people who died should be given credit for arming passengers for many generations to come with a sense of urgency about safety that actually could save many more lives some day.

[Flickr photo via flickrized]

Must read e-book: Fatal Voyage, the Wrecking of the Costa Concordia

by Chris Gray Faust on

Looking for a relaxing read en route to your cruise? Then don’t buy Fatal Voyage, The Wrecking of the Costa Concordia, a Kindle Singles e-book that takes an in-depth look at the modern day Titanic.

Written by journalist John Hooper, the e-book covers one of the worst passenger ship disaster since the Titanic in engaging detail. Numerous interviews with survivors describe plates falling as the ship’s two-story dining room listed, the dark passageways where passengers crawled to reach an outside deck, the confusion around the lifeboats as the crew, acting without clear orders from above, tried to maintain control.

Hooper’s experience as a Rome-based reporter for the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper stands him in good stead. The book contains details about the sinking that never made the U.S. coverage, including the Italians’ collective embarrassment around one of their own, Costa Concordia Captain Francesco Schettino.As you’d expect, much of the story does center around Schettino, and his unbelievable series of bad decisions. Hooper notes that the call to “salute” the island of Giglio came out of nowhere, as the retired captain that Schettino meant to fete wasn’t even there at the time. And he also captures the feeling of pride that Italians felt when transcripts revealed that Coast Guard Captain Gregorio De Falco had ordered Schettino to get back on his boat. No wonder that T-shirts reading “Vada a bordo, cazzo!” (get on board, dick) became top sellers.

The rush to publish does highlight the e-book’s faults. Hooper’s e-book, which reads more like a long-form magazine article, came out on Feb. 15, just a little over a month from the Jan. 13 sinking. As a reader, I wanted even more details from the survivors than Hooper collected. Every passenger who lived through that night has a chilling tale to tell, and while the examples that Hooper picked were jaw-dropping, I had more questions than answers when I finished the book.

But hey, what do you expect for $1.99? Hooper continues to cover the fallout from the Costa Concordia tragedy for the Guardian. If and when he releases a longer, more detailed version of what exactly happened on the ship that night, I’ll be hitting the download button.

Travel writer Chris Gray Faust covers value luxury vacations on her award-winning blog, Chris Around The World.

Cascading changes likely for cruise travelers

by Chris Owen on

Changes are coming for cruise travelers even though exactly what happened to force Costa Concordia to ground off the coast of Italy has yet to be defined by forensic evidence. Playing out as everything from rumors to accusations and first-hand reports from passengers actually on the ship, media outlets have been working overtime reporting the story. Some accounts seem reasonable, some far-fetched and some totally bizarre. But churning to the top and coming more in focus all the time are changes likely to be seen in the very near future that will affect every cruise traveler.

Thinking of what we know and have seen about the Costa Concordia event, there are some facts that we don’t need an official report to verify. We see a once-mighty cruise ship on its side with our own eyes and ask “How could this have happened?” That’s the big question that concerns cruise industry experts and will force changes in the operation of cruise ships in the very near future.

“This tragedy has called into question our company’s safety and emergency response procedures and practices,” Micky Arison, chairman and CEO of Carnival Corporation said last week, calling for an audit of safety procedures.

Technically, by the numbers, cruise vacations are safe. According to the Cruise Lines International Association, more than 16 million passengers sailed in 2011 and 2012 is projected to exceed that by at least another million. This type of accident is rare. But so was the sinking of the RMS Titanic, 100 years ago in April. That disastrous event served as a wake up call to an overly confident cruise industry at the time much like Concordia has shaken even the hyper-safe cruise industry of today.

“While I have every confidence in the safety of our vessels and the professionalism of our crews, this review will evaluate all practices and procedures to make sure that this kind of accident doesn’t happen again,” said Arison.

To insure future safety at a higher, more effective level, Arison ordered a complete review of safety procedures fleet-wide across all the various cruise line brands that fall under the Carnival Corporation umbrella.

On the safety topic, everyone in the cruise industry seems to agree.

“Any loss of life at sea is tragic, but the Costa Concordia disaster is even more traumatic since it was entirely preventable,” said Captain Bill Doherty, director of maritime affairs for Nexus, a provider of private maritime safety and security solutions.

“Safety is a journey rather than a destination,” said Royal Caribbean President and CEO Adam Goldstein echoing the position of many in the cruise industry. Goldstein notes the need to look for lessons in every minor incident or accident. Looking to the future, Goldstein cautions against complacency. “This is a never ending cycle. As our Chairman Richard Fain says, there is no such thing as perfect safety but there is such a thing as perfect dedication to safety. We strive to be true to that concept.”

A complete review of safety procedures will naturally come in contact with security issues that can create potential safety problems. Right after 9-11, the travel industry was on it’s highest level of security ever. Airlines, cruise lines, hotels, and airports in addition to governmental agencies put into place new protocols to help prevent a disaster such as the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center from happening ever again.

In the process, the cruise industry inquiry will probably run into other areas of safety and security that will force cascading change on areas other than lifeboats, safety drills and the like.

Changes to look for:

  • Safety Drill before the ship leaves the dock on every sailing- This is just a no-brainer after the Costa Concordia event where hundreds who had embarked the vessel the day of the grounding had received little if any safety instruction.
  • The modification or end of Navigational Bridge and behind the scenes tours– They went away right after 9-11 but have crept back in from one cruise line to another as a revenue source that offers an opportunity to cause harm that could affect a ship full of passengers.
  • Increased security presence on ships– Although rare, instances of binge drinking and other associated “I’m at sea so its OK” behavior will come under greater control with an increased security presence on ships industry-wide.
  • Tighter rules on teens– Teen rape, underage drinking and other associated problems with teen travelers are caused by an environment that inadvertently allows these things to happen. While cruise lines have a zero-tolerance for crime and drugs on ships, the very nature of a cruise ship environment allows them to happen. This will be a tough one to address but one that is overdue for action.
  • Passports required– The issue has been kept on hold for years as the travel industry moans that requiring passports for US citizens would prevent many from traveling. One step toward better security and resulting safety would be the increased level of security brought by requiring passports of all passengers embarking any ship, any time.
  • Background checks– Critics of the cruise industry point to a lack of diligence that allows sex and drug offenders and child molesters, required to register on land, to easily board cruise ships. Their presence creates an environment of easy prey as underage passengers are allowed to roam free. Once seen as the call of overly-critical cruise foes, the industry will give the topic serious consideration.
  • Psychological profiles of command officers– Especially if evidence confirms that the captain of Costa Concordia was on a joy ride to show off the ship to the folks on shore, this will be huge. “Captains ultimately answer to no one — on board,” Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor-in-chief of Cruise Critic told MSNBC. The reasons are steeped in seafaring history, she said. “But I think that’s something that will change.” More checks and balances are needed, and Brown anticipate changes in the future as a result of the Concordia grounding. “A lot of standardization is probably coming out of this,” she said.

Experts agree, this can’t happen again, but questions are raised.

Done right, this increased focus on safety and security plus all the areas of cruise ship operations that are affected by both will be costly. Expect cruise prices to rise as a result. Still, wouldn’t it be better to pay $50 more for a cruise and greatly reduce the odds of these things happening ever again?

It was not all that long ago that safety concerns over trouble spots like Egypt, Mexico, Japan and others around the globe were driving travelers toward cruise vacations. Does this Costa Concordia tragedy change that attraction?

These are questions that will be answered over time as the cruise industry, still reeling from this latest event, recovers, regroups and moves on.

Flickr photo by Cyr0z


Nat Geo presents five cruise ship disasters that changed travel

by Kraig Becker on

Over the past week, the Costa Concordia story has been a prominent one amongst both the mainstream media and travel outlets alike. The sinking of a cruise ship is not a common occurrence and ranks amongst the worst travel nightmares imaginable. While questions about exactly what happened aboard that ship remain, it is clear that the accident will likely have far reaching consequences and bring change to the cruise industry.

With that in mind, our friends over at National Geographic have put together an interesting article, along with some very compelling images, of 5 cruise ship disasters that changed travel. Each of the entries on the list, and the Costa Concordia is not among them, left an indelible mark on how cruise ships operate today. For example, not surprisingly, the Titanic earns a place on Nat Geo’s roll call of infamy thanks to the fact that when it went down, there were only enough lifeboats for about half the passengers on board. As a result, 1500 people perished, and cruise ships were later mandated to begin carring enough lifeboats for everyone.

The four other entries on the list had a similar impact on the industry, although not all of them resulted in such a massive loss of life. It is an interesting study of how a disaster at sea can make a lasting change for the better, and end up making travel by ship a lot safer in the process.

Cruise tragedy calls for increased focus on safety

by Chris Owen on

On the heels of the Costa Concordia cruise tragedy, where a once-proud ocean going vessel now lay on its side off the coast of Italy, calls for increased safety standards and procedures are being made. While history will remember the Concordia event as more of a near-miss than a Titanic-like disaster as tabloids might have us believe, most experts agree: this can’t happen again.

As rescue workers still try to find 20-some missing passengers, blame has been placed squarely on the shoulders of the ship’s master, Captain Francesco Schettino. The ship was sailing a course approved by the cruise line, similar to an airline flight plan, when Captain Schettino chose to deviate from that plan, sailing too close to a nearby island in order to show the ship to locals.

“This route was put in correctly. The fact that it left from this course is due solely to a maneuver by the commander that was unapproved, unauthorized and unknown to Costa,” said Costa Chairman and CEO Pier Luigi Foschi in a live press conference via telephone from Italy yesterday.
Rogue move on the part of an out-of-control captain or not, it is clear that changes will have to be made in the way cruise lines do business to insure another event like this never happens again.

“The incident has many in the maritime industry and those contemplating a cruise questioning how something like this could happen” says cruise expert Paul Motter on FoxNews. “After all, the Costa Concordia, which was carrying 4,200 passengers and crew, was stocked with the state-of-the-art navigation equipment.”

Look for changes in the way cruise lines do business very soon. Maybe more focus on safety instructions, starting at embarkation. Perhaps more detail and a different way of handling safety drills and surely some sort of check system that requires more than just a Captain’s whim to change a ship’s course. But Motter urges passengers to take responsibility for their own safety with a number of suggestions.

“Choose a cruise line that specializes in your native language,” says Motter. During the Costa Concordia event, safety instructions being broadcast over the ship’s loudspeaker system were difficult to hear in any language, leaving those who did not speak the language being broadcast at a disadvantage. “Costa, MSC and other cruise lines offer cruises in as many as five languages simultaneously. Europeans are used to hearing announcements in five languages consecutively; Italian, French, German, Spanish and English. In a critical situation the idea of having to communicate in five languages is not just daunting, it can mean life or death.”

Another lesson to be learned from Costa Concordia is to avoid itineraries where passengers are allowed to embark from multiple ports. In the U.S., passengers embark and disembark at the same port in most cases. European sailings allow passengers to embark along the way.

“During a disaster, having people onboard who have not yet had a boat drill can really add to the chaos, ” says Motter, noting the International maritime law requirement that says a ship must hold its safety drill within 24 hours of sail-away. Many cruise lines have a safety drill before the ship begins to move. While procedures followed on Costa Concordia were in compliance with this rule, it left 600-some passengers who embarked the ship the day of the event, uninstructed on safety procedures, adding to the confusion of getting off the ship.

Cruise lines, appropriately, will wait until the final story is told about Costa Concordia. The ship’s “black box” of navigational data and other pertinent information was seized by local authorities in connection with their investigation of the captain. That may add information that will steer the direction the cruise industry takes.

Costa has placed priority appropriately. They still have 20-some unaccounted for passengers to find. Addressing potential environmental hazards caused by that ship laying on its side off the coast of Italy is also a priority right now. But look for changes to be coming soon, changes that will impact the on-board experience of a cruise vacation, hopefully in a safety-conscious way that will make for smooth sailing into the future.

Getty image/daylife