Just as it seemed things might be calming down a bit with the media hysteria surrounding the Carnival Triumph's problems, a failed backup generator test on the Carnival Dream while in St. Maarten delayed the ship's departure. Facebook and Twitter lit up immediately with reports of nonworking elevators and human waste all over the floor. News media quickly seized on this latest mishap, fed by what can be best characterized as misinformation.
The decision was quickly made to end the cruise in St. Maarten and fly passengers back to Orlando or their home city, allowing the passengers to stay on the ship until they could be repatriated.
Our agency happened to have nine passengers booked on the Dream. What follows is factual information gathered from reports and from their story of what really happened.
• A backup generator failed during an in-port maintenance test. The test worked the way it was supposed to. The decision to terminate the cruise was the only course of action that could have been taken.
• "We're not allowed off the boat," the media quoted one passenger as having said, "even though we have no way to use the rest rooms onboard." A total fabrication, according to our clients onboard.
• It is true passengers were not allowed off the ship until new immigration and customs clearance could be arranged with St. Maarten. Once that was done, passengers moved freely between the ship and the port.
• Shipboard shops and the casino reopened, and regular shows and activities were resumed.
• Our clients were highly complimentary of the Carnival Dream crew.
• Passengers without passports were taken to the St. Maarten airport, cleared immigration and returned to the U.S. without incident.
• Our clients, in their words, had a marvelous extension to their cruise by a day, were escorted to the airport by St. Maarten police and got through check-in procedures and on the plane in 30 minutes. Once onboard, food, beverage and entertainment were available at no charge.
• Passengers who could not fly back to the U.S. for medical or other reasons were transferred to a Norwegian Cruise Line ship to get them back to the U.S.
In the case of the Triumph, Carnival exercised an abundance of caution and canceled additional Triumph sailings as well as the first two sailings of the newly transformed Carnival Sunshine. Thanks to the immediacy of social media, news of the cancellations reached cruise passengers well before it got to most of the agents who had booked them. Passengers who had booked through agents reportedly were allowed to cancel and rebook directly with the cruise line, with the agent being notified after the fact. Passengers expressed their displeasure on several websites, agents weren't happy, and call wait times were running 90 minutes. It was a test of everyone's customer service skills.
But now let me tell you the back story.
In 1990, our agency, then an upstart that had been in business only a few years, was named Carnival Cruise Lines' Agency of the Year. Our award ceremony was held on the Carnival Ecstasy as part of its inaugural ceremony. We sat at dinner one evening with Ted Arison, the founder of Carnival. He freely discussed the cruise industry, the beginnings of Carnival and his philosophies on running the business. Simply put, they were:
- Take care of the guests. That's where your attention should be. He knew who paid the bills.
- Take care of the brokers -- the travel retailers. Ted knew that Carnival had to support the distribution system.
- Take care of the "inside guests," which is how he referred to the shipboard staff and other employees.
Doing these things meant running a tight ship (pun intended). It meant putting people in positions of responsibility who were experts in their fields, be it operations, marketing or sales. They just had to be the best for the job.
At Carnival Corp., apples don't fall far from the tree. At the corporate level, I am certain intense attention is being given to every aspect of how all these recent setbacks have been handled and what must and will be done in the short term to gain control of them.
During Carnival Corp.'s March 15 earnings call, analysts asked five times about maintenance spending. Each time, they were told that such expenditures were not broken out as a separate line item. Only days later, too many sensational news reports of these and a handful of other operational events involving Carnival ships attracted the attention of politicians, notably Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who made headlines some five years ago campaigning for an airline passenger bill of rights. He is now calling for international cruise lines to adopt voluntarily a cruise ship passenger bill of rights to deal with mishaps that he seems to think might in part be maintenance-related.
I have watched similar "fact finding" hearings with dismay in the past. I have an abiding concern in the following areas regarding this "bill of rights":
- Congressional hearings on cruise ship passenger rights will be held.
- They will quickly turn to an in-depth investigation of maintenance expenditures for all cruise lines.
- A forensic accountant looking for 15 minutes of fame will successfully dissect the maintenance expenses associated with ordinary operations from money spent for dry-docks and capital overhauls, not only at the corporate level but at the individual brand level.
- Any great disparity in such expenditures between one line and another, or one industry to another, will produce another round of sensationalized stories that will likely pale those of recent weeks into insignificance.
- "None of these cruise lines pay U.S. income taxes" will be rolled out again and used to obfuscate and further inflame emotions.
- They will note that cruise ship employees are not subject to U.S. wage and hour laws, and politicians will find reasons that they should be.
All this has the potential to affect cruise sales adversely. We can help ourselves by informing our clients accurately and countering sensational press accounts publicly.
Charlie and Sherrie Funk own Just Cruisin' Plus in Brentwood, Tenn., and have provided agent and agency-owner training throughout North America on every facet of travel agency operations. They are the authors of several books, including "A Recipe for Travel Agency Success," "Creating a Blueprint for Growing Your Agency" and "You're Invited," a complete guide to hosting consumer travel events.