Tag Archives: Italy

CEO says media ‘massacre’ could destroy Costa brand

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CEO says media ‘massacre’ could destroy Costa brand

By Donna Tunney

Costa Cruises’ bookings are down 35% year over year since the Costa Concordia accident in Italy on Jan. 13, the line’s chairman and CEO, Pier Luigi Foschi, told Italian newspaper La Stampa earlier this month.

The Foschi interview raised a specter that has not been openly discussed: that all the negative publicity surrounding the Concordia incident could ultimately sink the Costa brand.

“Our brand has been massacred by the media,” Foschi said, and even though “the company is solid, with a net worth of several billion euros,” Costa Cruises “could fail as a [brand].”

In an annual filing last month with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, parent company Carnival Corp. stated that booking volume across its brands had dropped by 20% in the immediate aftermath of the Concordia incident. But that figure did not include Costa Cruises itself. In its filing, Carnival Corp. said only that Costa’s bookings were down significantly.

In a follow-up to Foschi’s statements to La Stampa, Costa issued a statement explaining, “Our chairman and CEO replied to a question regarding the possibility of bankruptcy of our company. He actually replied that although the company is financially very strong and the company will not go bankrupt, there is no certainty about the brand.

“This declaration was caused by the enormous attack of the mass media on Costa Crociere, most of it unfair and unverified. However, it is necessary to clarify that this is a remote possibility because it is our intention to work hard to do everything in our power to save the brand and to restore our credibility.”

The Concordia hit a rocky reef as it sailed north from Civitavecchia and quickly took on water. The half-submerged ship remains off the coast of the island of Giglio, where salvage crews are trying to remove its 500,000 gallons of fuel.

Twenty-one people have so far been confirmed dead in the incident, and at least 11 remain missing.

Captain not solely to blame, says prosecutor

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  1. Captain not solely to blame, says prosecutor

    According to today’s Telegraph, the chief prosecutor in charge of the inquiry has implored investigators to look beyond the behaviour of the captain to the role played by the liner’s owners, Costa Cruises.

    His comments were published as salvage experts began the difficult task of removing around 2,400 tonnes of fuel from the vessel.

    Beniamino Deidda, the prosecutor, said in an interview carried by several Italian newspapers today: “For the moment, attention is generally concentrated on the responsibility of the captain, who showed himself to be tragically inadequate. But who chooses the captain?”

    He said investigators needed to avert their gaze to the decisions taken by “the employer; that is to say, the ship’s owner”.

    Deidda, who has spent a large part of his career dealing with health and safety cases, said numerous other issues needed to be addressed.

    He specifically mentioned “lifeboats that did not come down, crew who did not know what to do [and] scant preparation in crisis management”.

    He added that it was “absurd” that in at least one instance, recorded on video after the Costa Concordia was holed, a member of the crew should have told passengers to return to their cabins.

    Schettino has also maintained that his employers have a shared responsibility for what happened. Among the questions the inquiry is seeking to answer is why more than an hour elapsed between impact and the order to abandon ship.

    Questioned by prosecutors last week, the captain said that he was in frequent contact with a representative of the company during that period.

    Schettino and his first officer are the sole formal suspects in the inquiry, which is looking at whether to bring charges of manslaughter and the illegal abandoning of a ship.

    On Monday, islanders reported seeing a large fuel slick in the waters off Giglio, which are protected as a marine nature reserve. The fuel, however, is thought by the authorities to have come from the initial impact with a cluster of rocks just south of the port of Giglio.

    The official co-ordinating operations on the island said on Monday there was still no evidence that fuel had leaked from the Costa Concordia’s tanks.

Italy cruise ship Costa Concordia aground near Giglio

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Italy cruise ship Costa Concordia aground near Giglio

The Independent’s travel editor Simon Calder: ”It is unbelievable … that this should happen to a 21st Century ship”

Three people are confirmed dead after a cruise ship carrying more than 4,000 people ran aground off Italy.

There were s

cenes of panic as the Costa Concordia hit a sandbar on Friday evening near the island of Giglio and listed about 20 degrees. People reached land by lifeboats but some swam ashore.

Rescue teams have been going from cabin to cabin, searching for survivors.

Italians, Germ

ans, French and British were among the 3,200 passengers. There were also 1,000 crew on board.

Helicopters evacuated the last 50 people on the deck who were in a “worsening” situation.

Three people were confirmed dead, Italian coast guard officials said on Saturday morning – fewer than the six or eight deaths reported by Italian media earlier.

Costa Concordia with hole in its hull (14 January 2011)The Costa Concordia was carrying more than 3,200 passengers when it ran aground off the Italian coast

Mediterranean cruise

The Costa Concordia had sailed earlier on Friday from Civitavecchia port near Rome for a Mediterranean cruise, due to dock in Marseille after calling at ports in Sicily, Sardinia and Spain.

One thousand passengers were Italian, with 500 Germans and 160 French.

Cabin steward Deodato Ordona says the ship suddenly began to tilt.

Some “tens” of British passengers are believed to have been on board, said the UK Foreign Office, which is sending a team to the scene.

Some passengers told the Associated Press the crew had failed to give instructions on how to evacuate the ship. An evacuation drill was scheduled for Saturday afternoon.

“It was so unorganised, our evacuation drill was scheduled for 17:00 (16:00 GMT),” Melissa Goduti, 28, from the US told AP. “We had joked what if something had happened today.”

‘Groaning noise’

Passengers were eating dinner on Friday evening, when they heard a loud bang, and were told that the ship had suffered electrical problems, one passenger told Italy’s Ansa news agency.

“We were having supper when the lights suddenly went out, we heard a boom and a groaning noise, and all the cutlery fell on the floor,” said Luciano Castro.

Passenger Mara Parmegiani told Italian media there were “scenes of panic”.

Costa Concordia

  • Entered service in 2006
  • Built by Fincantieri in Italy at a cost of 450m euros (£372m; $570m)
  • Capacity for 3,780 passengers
  • 1,500 cabins, including 12 suites, five restaurants and 13 bars
  • Four swimming pools and five Jacuzzi whirlpool baths
  • A 6,000 sq m (64,600 sq ft) spa with gym, sauna, Turkish bath and solarium
  • Sports pitch, cinema, theatre, casino and disco

Source: Costa Cruises and cruise industry websites

“We were very scared and freezing because it happened while we were at dinner so everyone was in evening wear. We definitely didn’t have time to get anything else. They gave us blankets but there weren’t enough,” she said.

The 290-metre (950 ft) vessel ran aground, starting taking in water and listing by 20 degrees, the local coast guard said.

Orders were given to abandon ship, Deodato Ordona, a cabin steward on the Costa Concordia, told the BBC.

“We announced a general emergency and took passengers to muster stations,” he said.

“But it is hard to launch the lifeboats, so they moved to the right side of the ship, and they could launch.”

Costa Concordia seen from land (14 January 2011)The cruise operators thanked the authorities and citizens of the island of Giglio for rescuing those on board the Costa Concordia

Hypothermia

Elderly passengers were crying, said Mr Ordona, adding that he and some others jumped into the sea and swam roughly 400 metres to reach land.

Rescued passengers were accommodated in hotels, schools and a church on Giglio, a resort island 25km (18 miles) off Italy’s western coast.

Most have now been moved to the mainland, Elizabeth Nanni from Giglio’s tourist information service told the BBC.

“Usually there are 700 people on the island at this time of year, so receiving 4,000 and some in the middle of the night wasn’t easy,” she said. “Some people jumped in the sea so they had hypothermia.”

Searches are still going on for “possible missing people”, regional official Giuseppe Linardi told the Italian broadcaster RAI.

Once the search of the cabins above the waterline has been completed, scuba divers will then check the decks which were submerged by the crash.

map

Coast guard official Francesco Paolillo, a local coast guard official, told the AFP news agency there was a 30m hole in the ship but that it was too early to say what exactly had happened.

“We think this happened as a result of sailing too close to an obstacle like a reef,” he said.

Costa Cruises, the company which owns the ship, said it could not yet say what had caused the accident.

“The gradual listing of the ship made the evacuation extremely difficult,” a statement said. “The position of the ship, which is worsening, is making more difficult the last part of the evacuation.

“We’d like to express our deepest gratitude to the coastguard and other emergency services, including the authorities and citizens of the island of Giglio, who did their best in saving and helping the passengers and crew.”

Two years ago, a Costa Cruises ship crashed into a dock at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, killing three members of the crew.