Friday the 13th was the 6 month anniversary of the January the 13th Costa Concordia disaster.
This weekend, I read through several dozen articles which looked back over the last 6 months since the Costa cruise ship killed 32 people and terrorized thousands. I watched the recent specials on NBC and CNN about dangers inherent
Yesterday I blogged about a near collision which allegedly occurred between Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas and a small Italian fishing boat, the Angela II, which is based in Civitavecchia.
You can read my article: Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas Nearly Runs Over Italian Fishing Boat. The article was based on
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
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
Late last Friday, I received a tweet from one of my 9,000 friends on Twitter informing me that a cruise ship had run aground off the coast of Italy. Not much was known about what happened. No one in the media was initially reporting on the incident.
I stayed up all Friday night and Saturday morning watching the increasingly frantic twitter
Yesterday, the Bermuda Gazette reported on the sentencing of an American tourist who was arrested for possessing pot on a cruise ship which ported in Bermuda.
The Gazette identified the passenger as 43-year-old Edward John Molinari, from New York. The newspaper reported that after the cruise ship arrived in Bermuda, customs officers and police searched Molinari’s cabin with a drug
I have been critical of Royal Caribbean’s PR skills over the years, thinking that this particular cruise line’s credibility is at the bottom of the cruise industry. So when RCCL announced after the terrifying storm which rocked the the Brilliance of the Seas and injured its passengers that the cruise ship "had full power and was operating as normal" and that no
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The cruise industry has an image problem. Royal Caribbean is the main reason.
This year began with Royal Caribbean’s business-as-usual approach to ferrying passengers back and forth to its "private destination" in Labadee (actually sovereign Haitian land leased from Baby Doc Duvalier). While Haitians tried to dig out of the rubble and bury their dead following the devastating earthquake, Royal
Last week was another rough week for Royal Caribbean.
First there were repeated outbreaks of the nasty norovirus aboard the Jewel of the Seas which sickened hundreds of unsuspecting passengers. Then there was the embarrassment of a Royal Caribbean employee with a criminal record stealing private information from Royal Caribbean computers regarding Royal Caribbean customers so her career-criminal-of-a-husband could break into their
A Seattle news station King5.com reports today that norovirus sickened 100 people on Princess Cruises’ Sapphire Princess cruise ship based in Seattle.
As we have reported in prior blogs, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concludes that whereas "person to person" transmission of norovirus has been documented, "norwalk gastroenteritis is transmitted by the fecal-oral route via contaminated water and
A handful of recent stories have shed light unwanted light on the image-conscious cruise industry. Cruise lines like Carnival and Royal Caribbean spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to paint pictures of care free vacations. But here are some stories published in the last few days which make you realize that the fun-filled family cruise may a bit different than
Obtaining accurate information from the cruise industry is difficult. Whenever passengers have a complaint, the cruise lines either ignore them or the cruise lines’ customer relations departments send them a nonsensical letter several weeks later dismissing their complaints or offering a 25% on a future cruise. This often infuriates the passengers who have no intention of ever sailing on a
In an article entitled "Family Seeks Answers in Disappearance of Italian Chef From Cruise Ship," the LA Times reports that family members, of an Italian chef who disappeared during a cruise, met with Princess Cruises representatives in California to obtain information regarding 
what happened to their son and brother.
The family of Angelo Faliva (shown here left) had flown from Italy to
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
