Cruise Law News : Maritime Lawyer & Attorney : James M. Walker : Walker & O'Neill Law Firm : Admiralty Law, Cruise Ship Accidents & Injuries

Last week I met Kevin O'Keefe.  Kevin is the genius behind LexBlog which designs and creates law blogs and supports legal bloggers like myself.  If you like the design and functionality of this blog, thank Kevin.  His team designed it.  

Kevin's company also runs LexMonitor, the best round-up of legal blogs around, as well as LexTweet which tracks lawyers who use Twitter.  Kevin also has an award winning blog "Real Lawyers Have Blogs" which is something every ahead-of-the-curve-lawyer should read.

Kevin was in Miami speaking at a convention and announced an-after-hours "beer for bloggers" get together at Tobacco Road via his blog and Twitter page.  For those of you not familiar with Miami, Tobacco Road is the oldest bar in Miami, with liquor license no. 001, and a relaxing place to hang out.

It was a nice time. Some of the lawyers drove for a couple of hours to Miami to make it. 

Legal marketing expert Paula Black, virtual law firm DirectLaw entrepreneur Richard Granat, international business lawyer Santiago Cuerto, estate planning lawyer David Shulman, business lawyer and Gulf War hero Juan Antúnez, and criminal defense lawyer and super-blogger Brian Tannenbaum all showed up. 

Kevin is an inspiring story. He was a real life lawyer and trial attorney in rural Wisconsin and then created Prairie Law (which he sold to Lexis).  He hit his stride by moving to Seattle to create his LexBlog success.  His company supports something like 3,000 law firms, from blogging law students to solo lawyers to the Am Law 200 big law firms.  LexBlog is an impressive network and helps small law firms like mine be the proverbial big fish in the small pond.  

I remember last year when I was searching for a company to host my blog.  I emailed and then spoke to the people at LexBlog.  I thought that I was interviewing them to see if they were going to meet my blog requirements.  Half-way through the 30 minute conversation, I realized that they were interviewing me to see if I met their criteria. 

There are a lot of top notch blogs and lawyers on the LexBlog platform - like Bill Marler's Blog which has expanded to include the NoroBlog and the Food Poison Journal which have touched upon cruise ship norovirus outbreaks. 

My first blog on Lexblog was on September 10th last year. Things started slowly.  Maybe only 20 or 30 people a day stumbled on to my blog, probably by accident.  But I'm now 171 days and 173 blogs down the road (who's counting?)  Last week alone, over 14,000 different people viewed over 25,000 pages on this little blog.  Not bad.  

More importantly, the blog has been cited in national law journals, local newspapers in Florida, and news sources in Europe and the Caribbean.  

Thanks LexBlog.   And next time I'll buy the beer at Tobacco Road.    

To see what other lawyers are saying about Kevin and LexBlog, consider reading "God Bless Mrs. O'Keefe" (pretty funny) by a South Carolina trial lawyer, David Swanner.

Credits:

Tobacco Road   Kevin O'Keefe

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

An article this morning caught my eye: "Newest and Biggest Cruise Ship: Oasis of the Seas." The article contains the usual "wow-look-how-big-it-is!" style of writing which is most typically associated with travel agents.  You know, those travel agents doubling as authors whose interest in describing this monster-of-cruise-ship is hopelessly intertwined with obtaining commissions by selling cruises. 

Then I realized that the article (appearing in a Dallas newspaper) was written by Jane Wooldridge who is the business editor of the Miami Herald.

I have written about the Miami Herald and Ms. Wooldridge in several prior articles: Miami Herald: Asleep at the Wheel Regarding the Cruise Industry and Miami Herald - See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil.

There have been an incredible number of newsworthy developments involving cruise lines over the past five years - missing passengers, high profile sexual assaults, endless pollution fines, fires, sinkings, and five Congressional hearings involving Miami based cruise lines. But the Miami Herald wouldn't touch these stories.  It did not even report on the passage of the first cruise crime bill in the 40 history of the cruise industry. 

The Miami Herald's writers never publish anything negative or controversial which might embarrass their cruise line friends.  Credible newspapers with real journalists are left to cover these legitimate stories - like the Los Angeles Times, the San Fransisco Chronicle, or the New York Times.

The Miami Herald sold out to the Miami-based  cruise industry long ago.  This latest article is just the same old cruise cheerleading that the Herald is known for.  Consider the gushing adjectives chosen in the description of the mega ship:  "wow ... amazing . . . revolutionary."  Can you imagine a business editor anywhere writing such drivel? The article contained quotes only from other cruise enthusiasts, travel agents and the cruise line's CEO, Richard Fain. 

The spectacle of the Oasis of the Seas raises disturbing questions which I have mentioned in numerous articles. But you will find no hint of controversy in articles by Miami Herald employees who consistently write travel pieces designed to sell tickets for their cruise line advertisers.  

Is it just coincidence that the article uses the word "Wow" (caps in original), when the corporate mantra at  Royal Caribbean is "Deliver the Wow?"   

And the latest controversy of this Cloverfield-like-beast-of-cruise-ship sailing past the ruins of Haiti to the cruise line's "private destination" of Labadee seems to many like corporate malfeasance on steroids.  But the Herald will look the other way.

See no evil.  Hear no evil.  Speak no evil.  The tradition of the Miami Herald continues.

Credits:

Newspaper vending machine        Daquella Manera Flickr Photostream 

Oasis of the Seas                       Kenneth Karsten via shipspotting.com

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

The official site of the Shorty Awards states that it honors "the best people and organizations on Twitter.  These unique awards are for the Twitter community, by the Twitter community."

140 characters of advice for a new user?

OK.  Thanks for reading.  Vote for me and I will appoint you to my cabinet, or maybe to be the Ambassador to the cruise ship League of Nations, or I'll send you a special gift, or  . . . 

Hey, I remember my friends . . .   

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Today, LexMonitor published an interview of me by Lisa Kennelly.  For those of you-not-in-the-know, LexMonitor is run by super-law-blog-expert Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog which offers the best services in the universe for frustrated lawyers who feel the need to blog after working a-100-hour-week. The interviewer, Lisa Kennelly - a Harvard graduate! - asked me some questions about my new blog. 

if I come back in another life, it will be a Harvard Graduate living in Seattle, a kick-ass city by any definition. 

P.S. LexBlog is the best. 

Here is the article unedited:   

Jim Walker has always been ahead of the curve.

The Miami cruise law attorney has had a web presence since 1996, when he created his very first web site. A former defense attorney, he switched sides in 1999 and became an advocate for cruise ship passengers, years before the majority of Miami lawyers started marketing themselves as "cruise line lawyers."

And his blog, Cruise Law News? It only came into being after he had been hooked on Twitter - @CruiseLaw for several months and realized he needed a forum to write in more than 140 characters.

Each component of his online presence serves a different but equally valuable purpose.

"Most of my competitors are where I was ten years ago," Jim says, "creating ego sites that say they are fantastic without providing any useful information to the consumer and without even attempting to establish a dialog with the public. The Internet now requires an interactive exchange. So I am trying to use my blog to provide the most current and relevant information in my specialized field of law."

We caught up with Jim for this LexBlog Q&A to learn more about his online persona and how he uses his blog to beat the mainstream media to breaking news. 

Lisa Kennelly: Why did you decide to start a blog?

Jim Walker: I became a blogger after becoming addicted to Twitter earlier this year.

In February, I watched President Obama’s State of the Union speech. The gallery was filled with people twittering away on their Blackberries and iPhones, sending out their own spin on the President’s speech. CNN covered the story and added their own perspective via Twitter. A few days later I registered @CruiseLaw. In March, I started “tweeting.”

I became hooked. A dozen times a day, I tweeted my perspective about crimes on cruise ships, bad shipboard medical care, mysterious disappearances of passengers, and even attacks against cruise ships by pirates! Stuff so unbelievable that I couldn’t make it up. To my surprise, a large number of people in the cruise industry began following me – mostly cruise line manager types, travel agents, and PR people who disagree with anything negative I mentioned about cruising. In the process, a dialogue developed with people on the other-side-of-the-fence so to speak. I enjoyed it.

I also found a lot of kindred spirits who share my concerns about the negative environmental impact of cruising – things like cruise ship wastewater discharges, and air emissions of cruise ships which burn bunker fuels. The carbon footprint of the cruise industry is incredible. A lot of “green travelers” like to read my tweets and I like to follow them too.

As you know, “tweeting” is just micro-blogging. My addiction grew beyond the 140 character limit of Twitter. I ran across Kevin’s blog and began following Kevin as well as LexBlog and LexMonitor on Twitter. And this led me to blogging. The LexBlog format fit my plans perfectly.

I wrote a blog post about the experience - Cruise Law Meets Twitter. 

Lisa Kennelly: What has been most rewarding about blogging?

Jim Walker: I blog about breaking “cruise news.” I was the only one in the U.S. who reported on the armed robbery of 11 cruise passengers in the Bahamas in October. I explained the legal liability of cruise lines who sell shore excursions but don’t warn their guests about high crime rate in ports of call. Last month, an additional 18 cruise passengers were robbed at gunpoint in the Bahamas after the cruise lines failed to warn the passengers about the first attack. I found a YouTube video of one of the passengers who had just been robbed, and posted the video and photographs on my blog. I broke two stories before any newspaper knew what happened! Soon “Cruise Law News” was being cited in major newspapers as the source of news.

Experiences like this are exciting and rewarding. We warn the public of dangers that the cruise lines like to keep secret. I embed my perspective into the news I write about. I am not a journalist. I am an advocate. And I enjoy reporting on news events with my own unique perspective.

Lisa Kennelly: What has been most challenging?

Jim Walker: There is not enough time to blog, practice law and have a real life. I have a full trial practice with 100 injured clients at any time. I have a family, two growing boys and a spouse (who is also my law partner) plus four dogs. I started my blog a little over three months ago and I have written 100 articles. My articles are too long, too. I can’t help it – I come from a family of story tellers. I feel sometimes like I am making a closing argument and I can’t stop myself. I struggle getting to the point.

Lisa Kennelly: What has the response been to your blog from clients, other attorneys, or anyone else?

Jim Walker: It has been fantastic so far. My blog has 10 times the traffic of my website, CruiseLaw.com, which I started over ten years ago. My biggest disappointment is that few people post comments. I like people to voice their own views, particularly if they disagree with me.

Lisa Kennelly: You and your firm have had a web presence at CruiseLaw.com for an impressive 10 years now. How has the way you use the Internet changed since then.

Jim Walker: I actually created my first web site, called Walker-Law.com, in 1996. I was a defense lawyer. My site was very egocentric. I used my own name in the domain and advertised that I was great at defending cruise lines. But I found that passengers across the U.S. began e-mailing me asking me to sue one of the cruise lines here in Miami because they had been injured or raped. They found my site through the old search engines and didn’t care who I was or even that I defended cruise lines! In 1999, I switched sides and created CruiseLaw.com myself using a Windows FrontPage program. It is amateurish but effective. 100% of the cases we handle are against cruise lines and six of our clients have testified before Congress on cruise safety issues. I have not updated the CruiseLaw site for ten years (but have a much-needed new design coming out the first of next year).

Now every lawyer in Miami calls themselves a cruise line lawyer. Attorneys I have never heard of are are paying for click-throughs on Google. Most of my competitors are where I was ten years ago. Creating ego sites that say they are fantastic without providing any useful information to the consumer and without even attempting to establish a dialogue with the public. The Internet now requires an interactive exchange. So I am trying to use my blog to provide the most current and relevant information in my specialized field of law.

Lisa Kennelly: How do you use your website, your blog, and your Twitter account, both together or individually, to market yourself and your firm?

Jim Walker: My website is like an online resume. Not much real information is on it. Just a description of who we are and what we do. The real marketing now comes from my blog. I still mini-blog on Twitter. I link to the other people who are shaping the daily debate on cruise issues. When I finish my blog, I post a link on Twitter. There are usually a hundred people who will quickly read it to see what I am rambling about. I take a lot of photos of our clients and cruise ships that I sue and post them on my Flickr page.

Whenever another cruise passenger goes overboard, people know where to find me.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Over the last four years, there have been an incredible number of high profile stories regarding the cruise industry: the "missing honeymooner" case of George Smith IV on Royal Caribbean's Brilliance of the Seas, the cover-up of Merrian Carver's disappearance from Celebrity Cruises' Mercury cruise ship, and the case of Laurie Dishman who, after she was sexually assaulted, was handed a trash bag by the cruise ship's officers and instructed to go and collect evidence from the crime scene herself.   

These terrible tales rocked the Miami-based cruise industry.  Connecting these tragedies have been five Congressional hearings - four hearings before the House of Representatives and one hearing before the U.S. Senate - leading to the introduction of the Cruise Vessel Safety and Security act of 2009.  For the  first time in the history of the 40 year old cruise industry, cruise lines will be forced to report shipboard crimes to the U.S. Coast Guard and the FBI.

And throughout this incredibly historic period of time for cruise victims, the Miami Herald has refused to report anything of significance.

Miami is rightfully called the "Cruise Ship Capital of the World."  Home of Carnival Corporation and Royal Caribbean Cruises which together own and operate 75% of the cruise lines in the world, Miami should be the hot bed of a never ending cycle of cruise-related news stories.  These events deserve the best and brightest of journalists and the highest standards of ethical reporting.

Instead, we have the Miami Herald.

The Herald is a provincial newspaper, with a travel fanatic as the business editor.  The paper is entirely beholden to the local cruise lines which pay the Herald for advertising and invite the Herald "reporters" to free cruises and parties where they hob nob with the executives and promoters.  In return, there is a quid pro quo where the Miami Herald looks the other way when stories break which could embarass its cruise lines friends. 

These stories have to be covered by legitimate newspapers like the New York Times, L.A. Times, and San Francisco Chronicle and many other smaller yet reputable newspapers which have filled the void created by the Herald's abandonment of its journalistic obligations.

I have touched upon the Herald's sell-out in prior blogs:     

Miami Herald: Asleep at the Wheel Regarding the Cruise Industry and Oasis of the Seas - A Vision of All Consuming Hell.

For the last week there have been multiple stories about the cruise-crime crisis in the Bahamas. Carnival and Royal Caribbean passengers departing from Miami have been robbed by shotgun in broad daylight in Nassau on tours sponsored by the Miami-based cruise lines.  The crime problem in Nassau poses a particularly troubling problem for Royal Caribbean's excutives in Miami who have to use Nassau because it is one of the few ports which can accomodate its mega-ship Oasis of the Seas.

And today, a story broke about a Princess Cruises' crew member "disappearing" under suspicious circumstances off of a cruise ship from South Florida which scream out for for the FBI to board the ship and try and determine what happened.  Although Miami-based Carnival Corporation owns the cruise line, this is the type of story which the Miami Herald writers won't touch out of risk of embarrassing their sugar daddies who, in essence, pay their salaries and keep them employed.

So who covered the stories?  ABC News, the Associated Press, AOL Travel, the Bahama Journal, Cruise Critic, FoxNews, the Freeport Journal, the Nassau Guardian, the Sun-Sentinel, the Telegraph, the Tribune, and USA Today.  But the Miami Herald?  Of course not - this is a compromised rag which  

Sees No Cruise Evil

Hears No Cruise Evil 

and

Speaks No Cruise Evil . . . 

Credits:

Censorship       Eric Drooker www.drooker.com

Herald Vending Machine      Daquella Manera Flickr Photostream  

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil    Tom Otterness (via MeijerGardens Flickr Photostream)  

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Those of you who have followed my blog over the last three months know that I have been hard on Royal Caribbean.  I think that this cruise line treats its injured crew members terribly, and it has handled the problem with sexual assaults on its cruise ships even worse.  I also think the Oasis of the Seas is a boondoggle.

So there are my biases.

But I have been rather intrigued by how Royal Caribbean's CEO, Richard Fain, doesn't seem to let much bother him.  Year after year he keep coming up with the never ending succession of bigger cruise ships which are announced to the world with great fanfare. 

Whenever there is a reporter or news camera surrounding a Royal Caribbean event, there Mr. Fain  is - showing President Clinton around Royal Caribbean's private "island" in Labadee, Haiti, or riding the flow-rider on the Independence of the Seas in Southampton, or waiving to reporters while spinning around and around on the carousel on the Oasis of the Seas. 

It is hard to imagine his competitor - Mickey Arison at Carnival - even trying to get aboard a boogie board. That would be ugly.  But "Fearless Fain" seems to be a former athlete and a natural at things like this.  He obviously is skilled at PR and marketing his Royal Caribbean brand with a hands-on approach. 

Now, I will quickly admit that the phrase "Fearless Fain" is not my idea.  Rather it was the title of an article written by John Honeywell a/k/a "Captain Greybeard" who writes an opinion piece for the Mirror in the U.K.  The flow-rider photo above is from Captain Greybeard's photo-stream on Flickr of the Independence of the Seas ("Who's the Daddy?")

Speaking of the flow-rider, there has already been one death after a passenger fell and struck his head.  But Royal Caribbean requires all passengers to sign waivers of liability before they step onto the boogie board and try to break their necks. And speaking of waivers, Mr. Fain announced on his "Chairman's Blog" that the new Oasis of the Seas will be able to expedite passengers riding the zipline over Central Park.  He suggested having them just swipe their sign and sail cards which will acknowledge their waiver of their rights if the line breaks.  No need for long lines, or a lot of paperwork. Very innovative.    

There is an interesting photograph of Mr. Fain signing papers when the cruise line officially took possession of the Oasis of the Seas.  Right in the center of the photograph is an American flag.  Now, this strikes me as funny.  Mr. Fain registered his company in Liberia.  All of his cruise ships fly flags of convenience in countries like Liberia and the Bahamas in order to avoid paying any U.S. income tax and avoid U.S. laws and regulations.

Was this happenstance?  Hardly.  I remember a couple of years ago when a Court in Miami ordered Mr. Fain to appear for a video deposition in downtown Miami in a case when parents alleged that their little girl had been molested by a youth counselor on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship.  Mr. Fain instructed the law firm defending the case to make certain that an American flag was positioned behind him as he sat in front of the videographer.  They didn't have a flag so they had to go and rent one for the afternoon. 

As Royal Caribbean tries to fill up the Oasis of the Seas and the Allure of the Seas comes into the fleet next year, it will be interesting to see if Mr. Fain can continue to skillfully market his Liberian corporation to us tax-paying U.S. citizens.            

Credits:

Richard Fain (photo 1)  John Honeywell a/k/a Captain Greybeard

Richard Fain (photos 2, 4)   Reuters via Daylife.com     

Richard Fain (photo 3) UpTake Travel Industry

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

At this moment, the Oasis of the Seas is sailing with newspaper reporters, travel writers, cruise bloggers, and other cruise enthusiasts.  They are tweeting their observations on Twitter under the hashtag #oasis.

One of the tweters is @johnnyjet who has a nice travel portal called JohnnyJet.com.  He posted a photograph of the Royal Caribbean executives (below) answering questions on the cruise ship.  He also asked the Twitter Kingdom for some "good" questions to ask the Royal Caribbean "execs." 

Here are my seven questions. They pertain to issues I am interested in - the environmental effects of a cruise ship this large, and the safety and security of its passengers and crew members:

1.  Does the Oasis of the Seas discharge wastewater/sewage (whether treated or outside 3 miles of shore or not) during the cruises? 

2.  If not, where does the cruise ship offload its sewage and waste?  In the U.S.?  Or in a foreign port?  And specifically which foreign port?  Nassau? St. Thomas? Falmouth? or Cozumel? 

3.  What happens to the waste and chemicals once offloaded from the ship?

4.  The LA Times reported that for a period of 32 months, there were over 250 incidents of sexual assault, battery, and sexual harassment against guests and crew members on Royal Caribbean cruise ships.  In light of these problems, how many security guards are employed on the Oasis of the Seas?

5.  How many security guards are assigned to the seven "neighborhoods" on the cruise ship?  Are there security "sub-stations" in each of the neighborhoods?

6.  How many security guards patrol the neighborhoods from 10:00 p.m. to 4 a.m., a time period we have found when female passengers are at a higher risk of being assaulted?

7.  Saturday Night Live joked about the Oasis of the Seas being being bounty for pirates. Whereas the thought of a pirate attack in the Caribbean may be silly, a large cruise ship like this could be a target of a   terrorist group.  Does the ship have a sufficient number of security personnel to not only protect the passengers from shipboard crime, but deter and fight off a terrorist attack?

Thank you for answers to these questions!         

Credits    

Top Photo      @johnnyjet  

Bottom Photo     Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., a Liberian Corporation (via CruiseCritic)

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

When I was in high school in the early 1970's, my prep school provided students with an opportunity to read the English version of the Russia newspaper Pravda.  The thought was that we should be reading every perspective to develop a complete understanding of international issues.

Officially referred to as the "Organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)," Pravda was the Soviet's propaganda machine disguised as a newspaper.  As the only source of information for the Soviet people, Pravda was a carefully crafted state owned one-side-of-the-story propaganda mill during the Cold War.  

Only those "facts" approved by the Soviet leaders were permitted to be included for mandatory reading by the Soviet masses.

I was fascinated by the absurdity of Pravda's stories.  Along with National Lampoon, Pravda became one of my favorite reads, for no other reason than it made me instantly disbelieve what was written and wonder what the true facts really were.  But unlike National Lampoon, Pravda was oh so serious - which just made it even more ludicrous.

In mid-September of this year, the  Cruise Line International Association ("CLIA") launched a web site called "CruiseIndustryFacts.com."  It is full of "facts" carefully selected by CLIA for your reading. 

CLIA also has a twitter page @CruiseFacts which occasionally tweets "facts" like "cruise line industry generated $40 billion to the U.S. economy in 2008!" 

Every time I click on CLIA's "fact" pages I feel that I am reading a copy of Pravda:  "We assign the same priorities to keeping guests and crew healthy, safe and secure, and to protect the environment as we do to our other critical business matters . . ."   

Pravda.  I love it.    

Photo credit:   vyoos.com     "From Russia With Crud"  

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Cruise lines which are in touch with their market understand the need to be versed with all aspects of Social Media 2.0.  Twitter, FaceBook, Flickr, and YouTube all present an inexpensive and highly effective way to get a company's message out to the public.  This is particularly important in times of crisis management, such when a fire breaks out or a bout of swine flu is running its course on a cruise ship.

Most cruise lines remain clueless.  Royal Caribbean, for example, has a Twitter page @royalcaribbean, but it has not been updated since June 19th.  The only tweet says: "Look for updates here soon!" - that was over three months ago. It resembles an abandoned store front.  

Other cruise lines which are using Twitter or FaceBook are not maximizing the potential offered by social media applications.  Companies like NCL  @NCLFreestyle have pleasant enough websites and utilize Twitter but are mostly just trying to push ticket sales.  Recent tweets by NCL: "hottest new cruise," cruises for "$249," etc.  You get the idea.

The problem with these tweets is that they flaunt the etiquette which has developed on Twitter.  Effective "twitterers" understand that hard sale tactics don't work.  In fact, they turn potential customers off.  But interacting with the public, and providing accurate and relevant information via a conversation, works.  You could imagine how ineffective and counter productive it would be if I took NCL's approach on Twitter - "hottest new lawyer," lawsuits for "$249," etc.  A bad idea.

Princess Cruises - What's Social Media?

When things go wrong at sea, the public deserves to receive accurate information, fast. And Twitter is the best way to do just that. 

When the Princess cruise ship "Royal Princess" caught fire on June 18th, the cruise line didn't release any information to the public.  But a passenger, a Pastor from South Carolina,  @gregsurratt tweeted about the fire from his iphone on the cruise ship.  He indicated that the fire was bigger than expected, that the cruise ship was dark, and that a tug had to tow the ship back to port in Egypt.  Frantic families in the U.S. had to rely on Pastor Surratt for information about their loved ones. He even tweeted photos of the fire, the passengers sprawling out on the deck in the dark, and the tug via "Twitpic" - an application which permits photos to be uploaded onto Twitter. 

When the cruise line finally awoke and posted its typical less-than-forthcoming corporate press statement, no one was paying attention to Princess Cruises.  Everyone was listening to Pastor Surratt tweeting away on the cruise ship in the Mediterranean.  Most troubling was that the press releases finally issued from Princess Cruises' corporate offices in Santa Clarita down-played the incident and provided incomplete and misleading information. 

Princess Cruises not only lost an opportunity to interact with the public via Twitter, but it lost credibility in the process.    

Twitter and YouTube - Effective PR Tools - P & O Cruises Gets An "A" 

Princess Cruises' sister brand P & O Cruises knows what it is doing in the world of social media.  P & O Cruises has had more than its fair share of bad things happen on its cruise ships.  It is best known for the tragic death of Dianne Brimble, who died due to a toxic mix of alcohol and a date rape drug several years ago.  The brand was known for heavy drinking, out of control parties and general debauchery.

But in the last two years, the cruise line has turned its image around.  The PR people at this cruise line rebulit P & O's reputation.  Social media played a big part.

For example, last May when the Pacific Dawn was sailing with passengers and crew infected with H1N1 swine flu, the news media in Australia went nuts. Front page news articles labeled the cruise ship the "swine ship."   

P & O went on the offensive. CEO Ann Sherry began giving short statements on the cruise line's blog.  The cruise line's website contains links to its Twitter and FaceBook pages as well as to "ship blogs" including the Pacific Dawn.  The cruise line knew how to upload videos of cruise activities to its ship blogs as part of its general marketing. It now had the experience to use this media to deal with this crisis. 

Ms. Sherry appeared on the scene, wearing a very smart red dress, and looked directly into the camera. She provided information about sick passengers and what the company was doing to address the issue. The cruise line used its Twitter page @POCruises to provide additional updates and links to the video.  It even uploaded a photo via "Twitpic" of Ms. Sherry, standing in the rain surrounded by reporters, while the beleaguered cruise ship with its sick passengers arrived at port. 

When the flu passed its course, the next ship blog, entitled "Clean Ship," showed photos of the Captain and crew having fun in the disco, smiling and laughing.  The message to the public was quite effective - everything is fine, come on aboard.

In the past several months, P & O Cruises continues to use social media effectively.  Ms, Sherry still appears regularly on YouTube videos, talking about the presence of surveillance cameras on the cruise ships, responsible drinking programs, and "customer care" teams.

it is nice to see a cruise line connecting with the public in this manner.     

Photo credits  

Photo no. 1 of Ann Sherry - Zimbio - "P & O Cruises Holds Swine Flu Conference" (Photo by Graham Denholm/Getty Images AsiaPac)

Other photographs and video - P & O Cruises

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (3)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

I first became intrigued with Twitter when I watched President Obama’s State of the Union speech in February of this year. The galley was filled with people twittering away on their Blackberries and iphones, sending out their own spin on the President’s speech. CNN covered the story and added their own perspective via @CNN.

A few days later I registered @CruiseLaw. I was hooked. In March, I started a Twitter forage that continues today.

Now a little over six months later, I can’t imagine not interacting with the people who follow me on Twitter. I have connected with more people on Twitter in the last 6 months than I have in real life in last 30 years. 6,700 followers. OK, I admit it. I don’t know them all. 

But the experience has led to newspaper and radio interviews, business referrals across the U.S., a modest group of fans and an even larger group of enemies who follow my tweets religiously for no other reason than to instantly and vigorously disagree with me. I like the agitators and detractors best.  It has been fun.

Lawyers USA Weekly recently ran an interesting article by Sylvia Hsieh which featured four lawyers who successfully turned their tweets into clients. Unfortunately, the article is no longer available on line without a subscription. But Bruce Carlton (@brucecarton) of Legal Blog Watch did a good job summarizing my small part in the article as follows:

"James Walker (@CruiseLaw) an attorney in South Miami, Fla., whose practice is devoted solely to suing cruise lines on behalf of injured passengers. Walker tweets about the three things he knows best: cruise ship law, cruise ship law and cruise ship law."

Its pretty funny to be pigeon-holed so accurately by a reporter in a 15 minute telephone interview.

Cruise Ship Law.  Exactly.  Welcome to my place in the Twitter Kingdom.

Don't be a stranger.  Follow me @CruiseLaw

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link