Handout photo of the ocean liner "Vision of the Seas" of The Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd. sitting quayside in Saint Nazaire Handout / Reuters

Senator Chuck Schumer calls the cruise industry’s new passenger bill of rights “a step in the right direction,” but he will be querying the cruise lines on how it will be enforced.

“While I believe that this passenger bill of rights is a step in the right direction towards increased accountability for the cruise industry and ensuring the safety and well-being of its passengers, I still have many remaining questions, both on the content and how the bill of rights will be enforced,” Schumer tells Skift.  ”I will be asking the industry to respond to a set of detailed questions, and will continue to insist on changes to ensure the safety and well being of their passengers.”

Taking a classic page from the crisis-management playbook, the Cruise Lines International Association yesterday issued its own International Cruise Line Passenger Bill of Rights (see below).

Many of the provisions either codify standard industry practices, such as the right to transportation home if a sailing is terminated because of a mechanical failure, or have so many loopholes that the the “rights” end up being mere possibilities.

The New York Senator in March called on the cruise industry to adopt a Cruise Ship Bill of Rights, with the inspiration coming from the tarmac delay rules in the airline industry.

The cruise industry has been under pressure since the Carnival Triumph fiasco earlier this year and a long list of other mishaps, including the Costa Concordia tragedy in 2012. Industry leader Carnival Corp. has even lowered its profit projections for 2013, citing its need to lower cruise fares even more than anticipated to get people to sail.

In one of Schumer’s provisions, he had called for “the right to disembark a docked ship if basic provisions cannot adequately be provided onboard.”

CLIA’s version of that plank in its cruise passenger bill of rights leaves a lot of wiggle room, stating:

“The right to disembark a docked ship if essential provisions such as food, water, restroom facilities and access to medical care cannot adequately be provided onboard, subject only to the Master’s concern for passenger safety and security and customs and immigration requirements of the port.”

In other words, if food and water can’t be provided, but there is access to medical care, then perhaps the right to disembark becomes fleeting.

CLIA’s inclusion of “the right to an emergency power source in the case of a main generator failure,” indeed breaks some new ground, but it lacks specifics as to what this consists of: a flashlight in every room or a redundant, backup generator with enough juice to power hotel services onboard the ship?

Other provisions, such as the right to have a toll-free number listed on the cruise line’s website, seem common sense.

Schumer will be sending cruise lines questions about these provisions to gauge how they will be enforced, and perhaps in the end passengers rights will be strengthened.

Or if Schumer finds that there isn’t much support for pushing the cruise lines to take stronger steps, then CLIA will have succeeded in forestalling stiffer measures.

Here’s CLIA’s International Cruise Line Passenger Bill of Rights:

1. The right to disembark a docked ship if essential provisions such as food, water, restroom facilities and access to medical care cannot adequately be provided onboard, subject only to the Master’s concern for passenger safety and security and customs and immigration requirements of the port.
2. The right to a full refund for a trip that is canceled due to mechanical failures, or a partial refund for voyages that are terminated early due to those failures.
3. The right to have available on board ships operating beyond rivers or coastal waters full-time, professional emergency medical attention, as needed until shore side medical care becomes available.
4. The right to timely information updates as to any adjustments in the itinerary of the ship in the event of a mechanical failure or emergency, as well as timely updates of the status of efforts to address mechanical failures.
5. The right to a ship crew that is properly trained in emergency and evacuation procedures.
6. The right to an emergency power source in the case of a main generator failure.
7. The right to transportation to the ship’s scheduled port of disembarkation or the passenger’s home city in the event a cruise is terminated early due to mechanical failures.
8. The right to lodging if disembarkation and an overnight stay in an unscheduled port are required when a cruise is terminated early due to mechanical failures.
9. The right to have included on each cruise line’s website a toll-free phone line that can be used for questions or information concerning any aspect of shipboard operations.
10. The right to have this Cruise Line Passenger Bill of Rights published on each line’s website.

The post Sen. Schumer reacts to the cruise lines’ self-imposed cruisers’ bill of rights appeared first on Skift.

Passengers leave the Carnival Triumph cruise ship after reaching the port of Mobile, Alabama, February 14, 2013. Lyle Ratliff / Reuters

The cruise industry said Wednesday that it’s adopting a passenger bill of rights that guarantees the “safety, comfort and care” of guests.

The bill of rights promises, among other things, full refunds for trips that are canceled due to mechanical failure, and a backup power source on every ship to keep systems running in the event of a main generator failure.

The announcement by the Cruise Lines International Association, which represents 25 major companies including Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Holland America and Cunard, comes in the aftermath of the Carnival Triumph debacle. The ship drifted for several days earlier this year without power as passengers endured filthy conditions.

CLIA said in a press release that its board of directors adopted the bill of rights and that it would be effective immediately for U.S. passengers who purchase their cruise in North America on CLIA’s North American member cruise lines.

The association also said that it had submitted the bill of rights to the International Maritime Organization, “requesting formal global recognition and applicability.”

“The cruise industry passenger bill of rights codifies many longstanding practices of CLIA members and goes beyond those to further inform cruise guests of the industry’s commitment to their comfort and care,” said Christine Duffy, president and CEO of CLIA, in a statement.

The bill also gives passengers the right to disembark a docked ship if “essential provisions such as food, water, restroom facilities and access to medical care cannot adequately be provided onboard,” subject to safety, security and local customs and immigration laws.

In addition to a full refund for trips cancelled due to mechanical failure, the bill guarantees partial refunds for voyages that are terminated early due to those failures.

The bill also guarantees “the right to transportation” to the ship’s scheduled final port or the passenger’s home city in the event the trip is terminated early due to mechanical failures.

Copyright (2013) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The post Cruise passenger bill of rights effective immediately for all major U.S. lines appeared first on Skift.

Costa Concordia Captain Francesco Schettino. / Associated Press

An Italian judge has ordered the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship to stand trial for manslaughter in the vessel’s shipwreck off the coast of Tuscany, which killed 32 people.

Judge Pietro Molino, at a closed-door hearing Wednesday in the town of Grosseto, agreed to prosecutors’ request that Capt. Francesco Schettino of Italy be tried on charges of manslaughter, causing the shipwreck and abandoning the vessel while many of its 4,200 passengers and crew were still aboard.

On the night of Jan. 13, 2012, the Concordia hit a jagged reef, which gashed its hull on one side, causing the ship to rapidly take on water just off the island of Giglio in the Mediterranean Sea.

Passengers said the ship’s evacuation was delayed and chaotic. The cruise ship listed so badly to one side that some life boats couldn’t be launched, and many people aboard had to jump into the sea and swim to the tiny island in the dark.

Schettino will be the only defendant in the trial, which begins on July 9. The five other defendants successfully sought plea bargains, which are now being handled separately.

Schettino risks up to 20 years in prison if convicted. He contends he is innocent and is being made a scapegoat, insisting that the reef wasn’t marked on the ship’s navigational charts. He has also depicted himself as a hero in the tragedy, saying that he skillfully steered the stricken ship closer to Giglio’s harbor, thus facilitating the rescue of the survivors.

His lawyer, Francesco Pepe, told reporters the judge rejected the defense’s request at Wednesday’s hearing to throw out the charge of abandoning the ship. The judge last week rejected Schettino’s plea-bargain bid, which would have drastically reduced his sentence in case of a conviction.

The disgraced captain attended the hearing Wednesday but made no comment afterward to reporters.

“Schettino is calm,” the Italian news agency LaPresse quoted Pepe, his lawyer, as saying. “The decision today isn’t a judgment on merits. The judge only evaluated whether the appropriate place for all the charges to be decided is a trial.”

Prosecutors have alleged that Schettino steered the ship too dangerously close to the island in a publicity stunt for Costa Crociere SpA, the Italian cruise ship company.

Court-appointed experts have pinned the blame for the shipwreck on Schettino, but they also concluded that the crew and Costa Crociere SpA, a unit of Miami-based Carnival Corp., committed blunders and safety breaches that contributed to the disaster.

The experts concluded that crew members didn’t have proper training or certification in safety and emergency drills, and that Costa had delayed alerting coastal authorities about the accident, an accusation Costa has denied.

The findings by the experts, along with descriptions by survivors, are expected to be at the heart of the prosecution’s case. Prosecutors made no immediate comment Wednesday about the judge’s decision to grant a trial.

The Concordia still lies in the water on its side outside Giglio’s harbor as a sophistical removal plan has fallen far behind schedule. Experts had promised to have the wreck out of there before the start of the island’s summer tourist season. But a date for its removal has been postponed by at least months.

The bodies of two of the 32 victims were never found.

Copyright (2013) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The post Disgraced Costa Concordia captain will stand trial for manslaughter appeared first on Skift.

Carnival Cruise Line's string of incidents dates back to the Carnival Splendor breakdown off the Mexican Riviera in late 2010. Here passengers hurry to transportation after the ship limped into San Diego Harbor. Paul Rodriguez / Orange County Register/MCT

The news just keeps getting worse for Carnival Corp.

Late Monday afternoon, the Miami-based cruise giant lowered its earnings forecast for the year, citing the low ticket prices that have been needed to drive cruise demand while the company had endured months of negative publicity.

The 24-ship Carnival Cruise Lines and its parent company, Carnival Corp., have taken a beating since mid-February, when fire broke out on the Carnival Triumph and left the ship without power in the Gulf of Mexico. Passengers endured days without hot water or widespread use of working toilets.

Carnival Corp. said in April it expects to pay about $700 million over the next two to three years to address concerns about backup power, fire safety and operating redundancies across its entire 101-ship fleet.

The company already lowered its 2013 forecast in March, dropping a pre-Triumph estimate of $2.20-$2.40 per share to $1.80-$2.10. Monday, Carnival said it now expects the full-year earnings to be in the range of $1.45-$1.65 a share.

Net revenue yields, or the revenue made per berth per day, are expected to decrease 2-3 percent compared to 2012, when the company was dealing with the aftermath of the Costa Concordia shipwreck.

Carnival last said it expected yields to be flat in 2013. Additional voyage cancellations and costs that were not included in the cruise operator’s last forecast are also expected to take an $80 million chunk out of earnings.

More details will be released during an earnings call late next month.

Also Monday, Carnival Cruise Lines announced that it had created a new position: vice president — nautical and safety operations.

The company hired Richard J. O’Hanlon, a former U.S. Navy rear admiral, to fill the job, effective Monday.

O’Hanlon, most recently chief operating officer of air charter company Talon Air, will oversee nautical and safety functions across the cruise line’s fleet, including bridge procedures, nautical operations and firefighting and lifesaving systems. Ship captains and other deck and bridge workers will report to him.

(c)2013 The Miami Herald. Distributed by MCT Information Services.

The post Carnival’s profits fall short as battered line drops fares to woo back cruisers appeared first on Skift.

The world’s second-largest cruise ship company announced Thursday that Brian Rice, who is retiring in spring of 2014, would no longer serve as chief financial officer, a job he has held since 2006. With 24 years at the company, Rice will remain vice chairman until he retires. In that role, he supervises finance, supply chain, strategy and information technology.

Stepping in to the CFO position, effective immediately, is Jason Liberty, who most recently held the job of senior vice president for strategy and finance. He started working at Royal Caribbean in 2005; he was a senior manager at accounting firm KPMG before that.

The company also named Henry Pujol senior vice president and controller. He joined the company in 2004 after working as a senior manager at KPMG’s audit practice.

(c)2013 The Miami Herald. Distributed by MCT Information Services

The post Royal Caribbean gets new CFO as veteran departs appeared first on Skift.

Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions calls its small shops the "original boutiques" in its new ad. Screenshot / YouTube

Trave ads seek to inspire and excite viewers into booking a trip. The methods used to elicit such sentiments include fast-paced music, flashy images, and emotional voiceovers; and ultimately they aim to convince viewers that a better time is just a plane ride away.

This week Holland defends its traditional way of life as the ‘original cool,’ while Thomson revamps its brand with a free running routine. Portland takes its time to convince viewers that it never settles for boring and an Italian tour company pushes food and wine instead of its services.

FOR ALL OF OUR SKIFTADS OF THE WEEK COLLECTION, CHECK OUT OUR ARCHIVES HERE.

Holland appeals to Americans’ inner hipster with a new multi-year campaign. The ad scoffs at Brooklyn, stating that it doesn’t consider its meals as artisanal or its small shops as boutiques because that’s the way they’ve always been in Amsterdam.  The ad quickly became one of the most watched videos on YouTube this week and one of the top videos on Reddit video after its debut on Tuesday.

Holland, The Original Cool was created by New York-based Mustache with sponsorship from the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions, Amsterdam Schipol Airport, KLM, and Amsterdam Marketing.

Thomson Holidays uses the freerunning trend to take viewers through one of its cruise ships at high speed. Freerunning team 3RUN stars in the campaign that’s meant to rebrand Thomson Cruises with a more contemporary, youthful image. The ship shown is the Thomson Dream, which just went underwent a multi-million pound makeover.

Travel Portland‘s new tourism campaign is too heavy on the text and too light on images that show what truly makes Portland unique. Images of Portland’s serene shoreline, biggest brands including Colombia and Nike, and famous Voodoo Doughnut shop are mixed in with generic shots of wine glasses and restaurants. At two minutes long, the video could afford to cut some length for a more direct and powerful campaign.

This new ad for Roman tour company Carrani does as much to draw tourists to Italy as it does to convince them to choose the established brand’s services. The video seamlessly connects the brand with the city’s finest food, people, and architecture. Italian videographer Gabriele Rivoli created the video.

The post Best travel ads this week: Holland argues it’s cooler than Brooklyn appeared first on Skift.

A Viking River Cruise on the Rhine. Rolf Heinrich / Flickr

Viking Cruises Ltd. ordered two vessels to start an ocean cruise business, a first for the company, which has focused on river voyages, Chairman Torstein Hagen said.

The 928-passenger ships are being built by Fincantieri Cantieri Navali Italiani Spa and will sail beginning in 2015 and 2016, respectively, on European itineraries, Hagen, who leads Woodland Hills, California-based Viking, said yesterday in an interview. The company may order as many as four more, he said.

Viking, founded by Hagen in 1997, operates river cruises in Europe on vessels with fewer than 200 passengers. In addition to sailing smaller ships, the company aims to give passengers more time at ports, an average of 12 hours per day, and less on the water.

“Most everyone has forgotten about the destination,” Hagen said. “We want our passengers to be able to see the Sistine Chapel at night.”

The 37-vessel company has been in expansion mode, introducing 16 ships in the past two years, with 12 more to come in 2014, Hagen said. Passenger volumes have climbed 35 percent annually over the past four years.

Viking is planning its first U.S. river cruise and may sell shares to the public, Hagen said. Its smaller vessels are built by Neptun Werft Gmbh in Rostock, Germany.

Editor: Anthony Palazzo.

To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Palmeri in Los Angeles at cpalmeri1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net.

The post River cruise line Viking adds first ocean voyages with two new ships appeared first on Skift.

German a cappella metal band Van Canto on stage on the Mein Schiff 1 cruise ship. / Full Metal Cruise

Miland Petrozza, the front man of German thrash metal veterans Kreator, is more used to his fans wading through mud and sleeping in tents than coming to his concerts from an afternoon of shuffle board.

Yet when he shrieked the lyrics “let there be darkness, let there be blood tonight” across the decks of luxury liner Mein Schiff 1 last week, the passengers of Europe’s largest heavy metal cruise had gladly left their spas and cabins behind for the chaos of the mosh pit.

The Full Metal Cruise is one of the more unusual offerings put forward by Europe’s $48-billion cruise industry, where tour operators target special interest customers from gourmets to nudists in an attempt to broaden their client base. Operators are seeking to rebuild trust and repopularize the industry following the fatal grounding of the Carnival Corp. cruise ship Costa Concordia off the coast of Tuscany in January 2012.

Kreator were among more than 20 bands booked by TUI Cruises, a joint venture between Europe’s largest tour operator TUI AG and Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., to lure almost 2,000 fans onto a round trip from Hamburg to Southampton via Amsterdam ending May 12. Most guests were first-time cruisers, said Godja Soennichsen, a spokeswoman for the company, while beer consumption at about 16 liters a head was more than six times higher than average.

Beyond Belief

The cruise industry’s penetration in Europe is about one- third of that in the U.S., said Jan Bovermann, a consultant at AT Kearney in Copenhagen, yet before the Carnival shipwreck it appeared to be catching up. The industry posted double-digit growth in European passenger numbers every year between 2007 and 2011, according to data compiled by Cruise Line International Association, with the annual total doubling between 2005 and 2012 to 6.1 million.

“The Costa Concordia was a disaster beyond belief for the industry,” Bovermann said. “I cannot think of a cruise liner that sunk since the Titanic. While the market in the U.S. has recovered, bookings in Europe remain poor.”

TUI AG today said its cruise business, which also consists of luxury arm Hapag Lloyd cruises, had an operating loss of 11 million euros ($14.2 million) in the six months ended March 31. While TUI Cruises was able to fill all its cabins, the load factor at Hapag Lloyd fell to 70 percent, prompting a push to cut costs and potentially reduce the fleet of five ships.

Desirable Holidaymakers

For the Full Metal Cruise, pursuing holiday-makers less fearful of death and destruction may be a cure for the industry malaise. The fate of the Costa Concordia, which is still visible as a wreck off the coast of Italian tourism hotspot Tuscany, has done little to deter German music fans from selling out the trip.

The cruise was organized to drum up publicity, generate income, and reduce prejudice in a client group which may have previously had reservations toward cruises, Soennichsen said. The average passenger age on the trip was 39, compared with a typical target range of 45 to 65.

The starting-point of Germany was the fastest growing of Europe’s five largest markets at almost 15 percent per year through 2011, the Cruise Line International data shows. The industry has benefited from a large middle class with 30 days of statutory paid leave per year, the highest in Europe, according to data from Eurofound. Germans, heavy metal fans or otherwise, are also desirable holidaymakers because they spend more on board compared with other Europeans, according to Bovermann.

Further Mishaps

Passenger growth in Germany slowed to 11 percent after 32 passengers died aboard the Cost Concordia, forcing operators to offer discounts to fill empty cabins. The Italian market shrunk 9 percent and Spain 18 percent.

The decline in Spain, where unemployment has reached a record 27 percent since a decade-long property bubble burst in 2008, has been exacerbated more than most by economic turmoil, the European Cruise Council said in a report. Italy “will not be fully back to normal much before 2014,” it said.

Carnival’s fleet of cruise liners has been beset by at least four further mishaps this year, including an engine fire that crippled the Triumph ship in February, leaving 3,100 passengers stranded at sea for four days. Two passengers went missing from a cruise ship in Australia earlier this month and have not been found. The incidents forced Carnival to cut its profit forecast for the year after it paid reimbursements and spent more on fire protection systems.

To make sure it could attract music lovers to the 962-cabin Mein Schiff 1, TUI teamed up with the organizers of Wacken Open Air in northern Germany, the world’s largest open-air heavy metal music festival, to make sure the appropriate artists came on board. The ship also boasts two outdoor swimming pools, nine restaurants and 11 bars.

“The after-hours heavy metal karaoke was especially popular, and our on-board tattoo artist was working around the clock,” Soennichsen said. The ship doctor reported no more than one broken bone and two incidents including incisional wounds, which meant a “very quiet” trip for him, she added.

With assistance from Christopher Palmeri in Los Angeles. Editors: John Bowker and Benedikt Kammel.

To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Weiss in Frankfurt at rweiss5@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Benedikt Kammel at bkammel@bloomberg.net.

The post Royal Caribbean and TUI drum up cruise interest with heavy metal voyage appeared first on Skift.

The captain of the Costa Concordia Francesco Schettino leaves at the end of the preliminary hearings in Grosseto. / Reuters

Prosecutors rejected a plea bargain offer by the captain of the cruise ship Costa Concordia, which capsized off Italy’s west coast last year with the loss of 32 lives, lawyers said on Tuesday.

Captain Francesco Schettino is accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship. He has admitted making mistakes but says he should not be the only one blamed for the disaster.

State prosecutors accepted plea bargains for five other officials, including four ship’s officers and the crisis coordinator of the vessel’s owners, Costa Cruises.

The prosecutors said they had rejected Schettino’s offer to serve three years and four months in prison as he bore most responsibility for the disaster. The other officers had played a “marginal” role, they said.

The giant Costa Concordia went down just outside the Tuscan port of Giglio in January last year after it struck rocks off the coast of the picturesque holiday island during a maneuver which brought the doomed vessel close to the shore.

The accident triggered a chaotic night-time evacuation of more than 4,000 passengers and crew from the 290-metre-long ship, which is still lying on its side on a rock shelf just outside the port.

A recording of a coastguard ordering Schettino to “get back aboard, damn it!” in a furious telephone call to the captain spawned a popular catchphrase that was printed on t-shirts in Italy.

“It must be reiterated that the accused Schettino almost exclusively carries the weight for the striking chain of errors committed,” the Grosetto state prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Schettino’s lawyer Francesco Pepe told reporters that they had always intended to fight the case at trial and had only entered the plea bargain because the five other defendants had done so, leaving the captain isolated as potentially the sole defendant on trial.

“We think now we will go to trial. We want the details of what really happened to come to light,” Schettino’s lawyer, Francesco Pepe told reporters.

The presiding judge is expected to rule on whether or not to approve the plea bargains for the other five by the end of the week.

“I can only tell you that anyone who has been in a position of authority would feel very, very depressed, exactly as he feels,” Pepe said.

Reporting by Silvia Ognibene and Antonio Denti; Editing by Angus MacSwan. Copyright (2013) Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

The post Court rejects Costa Concordia captain’s manslaughter plea bargain appeared first on Skift.

The iconic U.S. cruise line which had two ships in Europe this year - one sailing from Dover, the other from Barcelona and Venice - said it could not risk having ships in Europe.

It said it did not think Americans, who make up the vast majority of its passengers, would pay increased airfares to cross the Atlantic.

The post Carnival Cruise Lines won’t have ships in Europe in 2014 appeared first on Skift.

Read the Complete Story...