Tag Archives: cruise lines

Carnival UK questions how lines sell port excursions

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Carnival UK questions how lines sell port excursions

By Hollie-Rae Merrick

Carnival UK questions how lines sell port excursions

Carnival UK’s Gerard Tempest (pictured) believes cruise lines need to reassess their shore-excursion model as 
third-party suppliers continue to expand.

Speaking at the Clia Selling Cruise Conference in Southampton, chief commercial officer Tempest said in light of the expansion of third-party suppliers he was putting a lot of thought into the best approach for selling shore excursions and tours.

Attraction World recently started selling cruise excursions and Cruisingexcursions.com increased its agent commission at the end of April.

Tempest said: “I just wonder whether third parties have been in our blind spot and we have let some of those parties eat our lunch. We, and I daresay some other cruise lines, are wondering about our traditional model of offering shore excursions and tours. How fit for the future is it? And is there another model we could look at?

“That requires a lot of thought and understanding of the marketplace, but it is something that we are certainly paying attention to.”

Tempest, who was a keynote speaker at the Clia conference, also spoke about the excitement surrounding P&O Cruises’ Britannia and Royal Caribbean International’s Anthem of the Seas, which will both sail from Southampton on launch next year.

“Anthem of the Seas and Britannia will complement each other and will work together to stimulate the market,” he said. “The customers for Britannia and those for Royal Caribbean will sit comfortably together.

“We are excited about Anthem coming into the UK because of what it will do to stimulate cruise.”

Stuart Leven, UK boss of Royal Caribbean, agreed, saying: “The industry’s job becomes far easier with companies such as Royal Caribbean and P&O deploying their newest and best hardware in the UK.”

Cruise lines and tour ops cancel visits to Ukraine, Crimea

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By Michelle Baran

Sevastopol's Monument to Scuttled ShipsAs Russia annexed Crimea and the Ukraine government began to withdraw its military personnel from the peninsula this week, travel suppliers began cancelling visits to Ukraine and Russia, as well as to Crimean destinations.

Cruise lines have begun altering some of their Black Sea sailings to bypass previously scheduled port stops in Odessa, Sevastopol and Yalta.

Windstar, Oceania, MSC, Regent Seven Seas and Azamara have substituted port calls in alternative countries, including Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece.

Silversea canceled calls to the Crimean peninsula for the April 25 Black Sea sailing of the Silver Wind and for the July 21 departure of the Silver Spirit. However, should the situation in Crimea improve, the line said it would consider returning to its original itineraries.

Viking Cruises has a 12-day Footsteps of the Cossacks river cruise on the 196-passenger Viking Sineus, which sails from Kiev into the heart of the Crimean peninsula, with port stops in Sevastopol and Yalta. But its Ukraine departures begin in May, and the company has yet to decide if it will cancel any sailings.

“Though we know our passengers are paying attention to the developments on the ground, we have not yet seen significant cancellations,” Richard Marnell, Viking’s senior vice president of marketing, wrote in an email.

During a speech earlier this month at a dinner event to celebrate the christening of its latest generation of river cruise ships, Viking Cruises Chairman Torstein Hagen said that while nearly all of Viking’s river cruise capacity through the end of October was sold out, space was still available on its Ukraine sailings.

Many tour operators have already canceled either part or all of their 2014 tour itineraries that include stops in Crimea, offering affected passengers refunds or the option to rebook travel elsewhere.

Globus canceled all 2014 departures of its Ukraine and Crimea tour; Insight Vacations is no longer offering its 12-day Ukraine, Moldova and Crimea tour; and Intrepid Travel has canceled three Ukraine departures through mid-June.

Clia denies claims cruise is failing at corporate responsibility

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By Hollie-Rae Merrick 

Clia denies claims cruise is failing at corporate responsibilityClia UK has hit out at a report critical of the cruise industry and declared it “seriously flawed with inaccuracies”.

The Leeds Metropolitan University report claims cruise lines are failing at corporate responsibility to staff and the environment.

The report, published in the latest issue of the journal Tourism Management, claims that the cruise industry is failing to provide meaningful data over what is it doing to minimise impact to the environment.

Clia said it found the report “deeply disappointing”. The study analyses the “industry’s lack of corporate social disclosure and ranks companies through analysis of their corporate social responsibility reports and websites to provide the first cruise sector sustainability reporting index.”

It claims 65% of the 80 cruise companies investigated did not mention corporate social responsibility on their websites and that only 12 brands publish corporate social reports.

Clia said: “The cruise industry is highly regulated on an international basis to exacting standards towards both the environment and labour welfare.

“We find the Leeds Metropolitan report deeply disappointing as it is seriously flawed with inaccuracies and subjective commentary which fly in the face of the facts of the achievements that the cruise industry delivers throughout the world.

“In both areas we go above and beyond those high thresholds to enable our 21 million annual global customers to enjoy the seas in which they cruise and be cared for and looked after by a motivated and content workforce.

“We put great store into our social responsibilities and we make an enormously positive impact on national economies all around the world, to the tune of €37.9 billion a year in Europe.”

The report also questioned whether enough was being done to protect marine ecosystems and claimed there was limited public data to “sustain the claim that cruise industry contributed to the economy by creating jobs and contributing to the local economy of the destinations visited.”

Dr Xavier Font, the lead author of the study, explained: “Most companies report soft data, such as statements from their CEOs, that are easy to copy and do not show real change.

“Companies mostly report on their corporate vision and strategy, their credentials and their governance and management systems, but they fail to report on actual performance data on many key environmental and socio-economic indicators.

“Reporting on emissions, effluents, waste or water is the result of eco-saving strategies and regulatory pressure.

“But not one of the 80 companies reports on the sustainability of the resources consumed or biodiversity actions, and few disclose their positive social or economic impact on destinations.”

Clia highlighted that cruise lines invest in technology to reduce the impact to the environment, that the industry has adopted voluntary standards to govern the discharge of wastewater, and that the industry is in full compliance with international and regional rules on air emissions.