Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Ship Industry (3 page)

What you are about to read may at times seem unbelievable. At other times it may be depressing. Either way, the goal of this book is to bring to the forefront information that has been kept underground and to provide the foundation for social and political action and, ultimately, for needed change in an industry that has, for the most part, avoided close scrutiny.

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MAGINE SWIMMING IN CRYSTAL-CLEAR AQUAMARINE WATER, parasailing in the warm Caribbean sunshine, lounging on a pristine, vacuum-cleaned white sand beach, being artistically served visually pleasing meals, having your every whim anticipated and catered to, and being treated to a different, extravagant Las Vegas-style show every night. These are images of what to expect from a cruise vacation.

Cruises are advertised as the perfect idyllic vacation. The image is reflected by television shows set onboard cruise ships, by advertisements, and by glossy cruise-line brochures. Each gives a sense of how you will be indulged in opulence, pampered in luxury.

The images are certainly inviting: cruise lines are selling a product. Like any effective marketing campaign, the goal is to make the product to appeal to the widest possible audience. Each person is given something meaningful, something that makes the cruise experience seem attractive to him or her. The obvious question is, can it truly be that good?

TELL THEM WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR

“The Love Boat” television show gave many of us our first image of cruising: the socially affable captain, the all-American crew, the cruise director who knew everyone’s name and who took an active interest in everyone’s lives, the abundance of single people aboard looking for love. I saw the original episodes as a youngster and assumed, like everyone else, that the image presented was accurate.

In 1997, when I took a cruise on the original Love Boat, the
Pacific Princess,
several episodes of “The Love Boat” were aired on one of the ship’s television stations. The contrast between television and reality was staggering. What struck me first was the difference in the passenger cabins. On the TV show, they were nicely appointed and about as large as a typical hotel room, with a double or queen-size bed. My room aboard the
Pacific Princess,
on the other hand, was 130 square feet — at most, one-third the size of rooms shown on the television show — with a bathroom no larger than a closet. I slept on a smaller-than-average twin bed, with my feet hanging over the end. No passenger cabin on this ship had a double or queen-size bed.

The contrast between television and reality carried over to the dining room. On the TV show, passengers sat at tables with whoever they wished, went to dinner whenever they wanted, had long, leisurely meals with the freedom to take a spin around the dance floor between courses, and the dining room was spacious. In reality, dining times were rigidly set, you were assigned to dine with the same people at the same table every night, there was no dance floor, and space between tables was sufficient but not ample. unlike on the show, none of the officers or service staff were American. That the experience was a reality check is an understatement.

Like No Vacation on Earth

The nature of the cruise industry’s advertising has changed significantly over the past decade. In the 1980s and early 1990s, advertisements commonly focused on the cruise ship and the cruise experience. Images shown concretely represented what to expect when going on a cruise, from the physical facilities to the abundance of food.

In the mid-1990s the focus of ads began to shift. Norwegian Cruise Line was the first to develop an advertising campaign with a strong emotional appeal and using abstract images. Their “It’s Different Out Here” campaign, which was criticized by many in the industry for not effectively selling the advertised product, received several awards (including a CLIO, a Kelly Award, and an award from the One Club of New York) for its creativity. As well, the print campaign scored higher than average in readers’ memory of seeing the ad in a particular issue of a publication and on noting who the advertiser was.

Other cruise lines soon followed Norwegian Cruise Line’s lead. The result is that today much advertising is abstract and based on emotional appeal. Carnival Cruise Line — for a long time associated with images of Kathie Lee Gifford singing “If My Friends Could See Me Now” while having a fabulous time aboard a ship

— introduced a series of advertisements with dancing fish and dancing palm trees, projecting the company’s moniker “The Fun Ship.” More recent ads show passengers postcruise telling viewers about the great time they had and building up the virtues of Carnival Cruise Line.

Carnival Cruise Line and Norwegian Cruise Line are not alone in attempting to appeal to consumers’ emotions through their ad campaigns. Celebrity Cruises sails under the slogan “Exceeding Expectations,” Royal Caribbean suggests its cruises are “Like No Vacation on Earth,” and the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA) — the industry’s joint marketing arm — claims “You Haven’t Lived Until You’ve Cruised.” Norwegian Cruise Line has “Freestyle Cruising”; Princess Cruises, “Personal Choice Cruising”; and Costa Cruises, “Cruising Italian Style.” All of these slogans produce images that are positive but nonspecific.

Back Down to Earth

Celebrity Cruises’ slogan, “Exceeding Expectations,” is a good example of the problem with emotional appeal. How can a company promise to exceed everybody’s expectations? It sets people up for disappointment. In 1995 I went on a Celebrity cruise, naively buying into their promise — I truly expected them to exceed my expectations. But sadly, they did not.

The problem of high expectations is compounded by Celebrity’s advertising “Michel Roux cuisine.” Michel Roux, a Michelin-starred chef operates the Waterside Inn in Bray, England (just outside London). For a hefty consulting fee — reported by some industry insiders to be as high as $1 million a year — he directs the cruise line on menu and recipe development, periodically visits ships, and lends his name to the product. The food is not

comparable to what you would find at a Michelin-starred restaurant, but then, you wouldn’t expect it to be.

Despite the hype, Celebrity’s food is not much different from that of other cruise lines in its class. My Celebrity Cruise experience included lettuce that showed visible rusting, bruised and discolored fruit, cartilage and gristle as “edible” parts of boneless chicken, soups that were thin and flavorless, and food that was generally on par with a banquet at a midscale hotel. I wrote to the company and was told that my comments would be passed along to Apollo Ship Chandlers, the concessionaire providing the company’s food service. Nothing else was ever heard.

The newest wave in product development and advertising is “freestyle cruising” and “personal choice cruising.” The concepts are inviting: passengers are told they can dine where they want, when they want, and with whoever they want. However, it is not uncommon for dining rooms to be full and for passengers to have to wait a substantial amount of time before being seated. In the case of Princess Cruises, passengers can request traditional dining (with a set time and table) or personal choice dining (dine when they want). Given an overdemand for traditional dining, many passengers are, against their wishes, assigned the personal choice option.

Emotional appeals extend to other facets of the cruise experience. Most of these exhibit similar differences between the expectations produced and the product delivered, including for entertainment, service, and the overall quality of the cruise experience.

THIS ISN’T THE CRUISE I WAS PROMISED

One of my biggest struggles on cruises was reconciling the incongruity between image and reality. All cruise-line brochures claim the best food at sea, the best entertainment, the most varied schedule of activities, and staff that provide impeccable personal service. The reality is that differences between cruise lines in the same general class — that is, mass-market, premium, or ultraluxury — tend to be insignificant. Entertainment is good but rarely great. Activities are varied but pretty much identical from one cruise line to the next. And service reflects the standards set by management on a particular ship more than standards set by the company: the same company can provide a wide variation between its many ships. But in my experience, the areas with the greatest gap between image and reality are food and accommodations.

Five-Star Dining Every Night

All cruise lines make grand claims about food being bountiful are accurate, but often overblown. This is unsurprising, lines budget for food. Mass-market cruise lines, such as Carnival Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean, typically spend between $10 and $11 per passenger per day. Premium cruise lines, such as Holland America Line and Celebrity Cruises, spend $12 to $15 per passenger per day, on average. ultraluxury cruise lines, such as Seabourn Cruise Line, Silversea Cruises, and Radisson Seven Seas Cruises, spend from $20 to $24 per passenger per day.
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their food. Claims about claims about quality are given the amount cruise

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FOOD BUDGETS

Industry-wide, it was estimated that in 1994 the average spent for food, per passenger per day, was $12.
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With the increased buying power of larger companies and greater efficiencies of scale, cruise line food budgets have either remained static or decreased.
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Within these parameters, there is, obviously, a limit to the quality that can be provided. The best meals I have had on a cruise ship were only comparable to what you would find at a mid-range hotel restaurant. The majority of meals were equivalent to food that might be served at a large banquet. people returning from a cruise seldom express this view — most are, I think, embarrassed to admit their disappointment.