Last night I attended a pre-game party for the Miami Heat – Oklahoma City Thunder basketball game at a friend’s house. One of the families was excitedly talking about leaving on Wednesday for a cruise to Italy. Other families began comparing cruise stories to Italy. I don’t talk "cruise law" during social events. I just
After publishing Cruise Law News for the past two and one-half years, I decided to create a second blog: "Maritime Lawyer." It will cover maritime issues and events which don’t involve cruise ships. I registered MaritimeLawyer.com long, long ago and will be using that domain for the new blog.
My friends at LexBlog
In one of the weirder cruise stories I have read in a time, Carnival Cruise Lines kicked off a passenger scheduled to speak on a "low carb diet" cruise on suspicion that he was going to explode dynamite or release Legionnaires virus on the ship.
The bizarre case involves a neurosurgeon from Tennessee who, ironically
The big cruise news this weekend is the delivery of a new cruise ship for Costa Cruises which will sail from Venice tomorrow.
The Costa Fascinosa, which will carry 3,800 total passengers, is touted as Costa’s new flagship and the largest Italian-flagged cruise ship today.
Costa invited some 1,800 travel agents to sail on
Norwegian Cruise Lines has pulled off a major marketing coup with several of its cruise ships being featured in a new reality show called "Love for Sail."
Think of the new show being a mix of "The Bachelor / Bachelorette" meets "The Love Boat." Men and women will set sail on a NCL ship
I am out of town with my family on Spring Break for a couple of days. This morning I was on my computer reading the Twitter feed for Cruise Shipping Miami 2012.
As all of you know, the Cruise Shipping Miami event (previously known a SeaTrade) is the annual event sponsored by the cruise industry
Let me place my biases front and center.
I am no fan of the Miami Herald. it’s beholden to the cruise industry which pays it for cruise advertising ads. The Herald’s "business" editor, Jane Wooldridge, is the former travel editor for the newspaper. Although she graduated with me from Duke in 1980, she is at
I read an interesting article today about the high prices that some attorneys are paying to advertise on Google. The paid ads, sometimes called "sponsored listings," appear at the top or the top right side of the Google search engine search results.
There are two types of search results on Google: (1) "organic" listings which
Carolyn:
I read your recent article in the Conde’ Nast Traveler entitled "Ironically, the Costa Allegra Fire Gives Me More Confidence in the Cruise Line."
You write: "Carnival Cruise Lines and Princess Cruises had major fire outbreaks and not a life was lost."
Perhaps you forgot about my clients’ husband and father
Shortly after the Costa Concordia capsized, the cruise lines’ PR committee assembled to try and figure out a strategy to minimize the disaster’s effect on the cruise industry.
A decision was made for the cruise lines to issue a series of "talking points" to the media. The Cruise Line International Association (CLIA) and the American Society
Seatrade Insider has an interesting article today entitled "Costa Battles Media Onslaught, Concordia Scams."
The article raises the issue whether there is a future for the Costa Crociere brand following the Concordia disaster. The article quotes Costa CEO Pier Luigi Foschi admitting that Costa’s sales across the fleet are 35% below the
Swamped from a tide of bad publicity following the Costa Concordia disaster, the cruise industry today announced a change to its safety drill policy. The new policy? Hold your breath:
All cruise lines will begin to provide a safety briefing to the passengers before the vessel sets sail.
That’s it? Why wasn’t this the law a hundred years ago, after
Just when you thought this National-Enquirer-like story of the cowardly Costa cruise ship captain could not get any weirder, the Italian magazine Chi published a photograph of Captain Schettino and former cruise dancer/hostess Domnica Cemortan. It seems like the love birds were eating oysters and crab legs at a restaurant about a month before married Capitano Amore wrecked his cruise ship
The Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster fueled not only significant coverage by international newspapers and cable news programs, but also spawned an unprecedented look at the cruise industry by part-time bloggers and recreational twitter & facebook users.
I use a Twitter application called "TweetDeck" (photo below left) where I follow certain terms like "Costa Concordia" and hashtags like #Costa to stay ahead of this latest cruise disaster story. The
Last month was an ugly, ugly month for the cruise industry.
January 2012 will long be remembered as the month that brought us the death and destruction surrounding the the Costa Concordia cruise ship, resulting in the media asking us- is it safe to cruise?
Lots of other really bad things have been happening in the world of cruising this new year before the Concordia disaster, seemingly
A long time reader of Cruise Law News just contacted me. He suggested that I take a look at the promotional language in the website of the cruise industry’s trade group, the Cruise line International Association (‘CLIA") regarding Costa Cruises.
So I took a look at CLIA website on Costa Cruises. it refers to “Cruising Italian Style:"
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As rescue and recovery attempts continue to try and locate the bodies of passengers missing from the Costa Concordia disaster, law firms in the United States are moving forward to file class action lawsuits against Costa Cruises and its parent company, Carnival Corporation, in Miami, Florida.
One of the firms advertising for such cases and taking a high
Yesterday one of my clients, who I will call Jane Doe, contacted me after receiving an unsolicited email from the President of Royal Caribbean Cruises, Adam Goldstein.
The e-mail addressed her by her first name. It seemed to be personalized to her. It recognized her as a past customer and contained statements like:
"At Royal Caribbean International, the safety
