The 3,200 passengers who were finally able to disembark after their crippled cruise ship, the Carnival Triumph, docked in at Mobile, Alabama, will definitely not be forgetting their holiday in a hurry.
An engine fire knocked out the power in the Triumph, unravelling the ship’s related systems. It took a further five days for the ship to be rescued. In the interim, passengers reported sewage on the floors, poor sanitation and lack of access to toilets.
The operator of Triumph, Carnival Corp, also owns the Costa Concordia, that ran aground off the Italian coast and sank last year, killing 32 people.
Traditionally, the cruise industry promotes its packages for spring and summer during this period, and though it is not yet clear what effect of the Triumph disaster will have on new bookings, it is becoming clear that this sort of luxury travel may well be sailing out into the sunset.
A November 2012 report by PhoCusWright, the global travel market research company, said the cruise industry’s growth rate fell to 4% in 2012, down from 7% in 2011. In addition to the Concordia, the industry was hurt by the US recession and European financial crisis.
The fate of the Costa Concordia and the criminal charges filed against its captain have received extensive media coverage; the videos emerging from the Triumph disaster too have claimed a lot of news footage over the past week.
There is a clear shift in the mood among potential travellers about greater insurance against emergencies onboard the huge vessels that function as a self-contained world. Aggrieved passengers are less likely to listen to excuses when tour operators do not hold up their part of the bargain in case of a man-made disaster.
A welcome sign of humility
Actor Bruce Willis has apologised for his boring interview on BBC One, blaming jet-lag for his vague answers while promoting his latest film, the strangely named A Good Day to Die Hard.
For media outlets that regularly receive hundreds of “interesting” press releases from various public relations (PR) firms every day in Qatar, Willis’s admission is a welcome sign of humility.
For every expertly designed PR package, there are at least a dozen or more that will fail in conveying the most basic information that every news organisation looks for: the what, when, who, where, and how of the issue in question.
Some actors of course tend to make the interview a performance in itself: people still remember Tom Cruise jumping up and prancing around during Oprah Winfrey’s chat show, while he proclaimed his love for actress Kate Hudson. It’s a different story that the couple split up last year.
Joaquin Phoenix appeared to mumble through his interview with David Letterman in 2009, seemingly announcing his retirement from showbiz. He later revealed that his eccentric behaviour was for a mockumentary, I’m Still Here (2010), that he and Casey Affleck were filming.
Hype or fact, it’s all about PR.