Cruise success poses a giant challenge

16/01 17:19 CET

world news

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Giant cruise liners actually constitute a double industry. They do not only fill a giant niche in tourism but in ship building. Then there are the port-related activities and onboard services to feed and hire for. The savings of scale in these colossal fun palaces make a cruise more affordable to more people too. One of the downsides, however, is that, if one of these giants needs rescuing, it is a giant problem.

The Italian Costa Concordia has a passenger capacity of 3,200. At maximum occupancy it needs 1,100 crew and onboard staff. It would take nine or ten 747 Jumbo Jets to carry this many people. It is nearly 300 metres long and 40 metres wide, and rises nearly the same height above the water line.

The cruise ships are descended from the ocean liners that used to carry people between continents for some 100 years, until air travel overtook them. The competition sent almost the whole liner species to the scrapyard. Then it became possible to put such a range of comfort and entertainment on cruisers that they became easier for more people to afford as an attractive alternative to a land-based package holiday.

Since 1980, the cruise market has increased at nearly twice the rate as for tourism as a whole. Over time, it grew so that budgets for travelling the seas in the lap of luxury did not need to be quite so extravagant. For business, the more the merrier…

Bill Gibbons, Director of the Passenger Shipping Association, said: “Well the UK is driving forward, the second biggest source market in the world after the US. And of course the population in North America is five times ours. The next in Europe is Germany with about 700,000 passengers, followed by Italy, Spain and then France. But there’s a huge potential to develop cruising not only in the UK but in Europe as a whole.”

Europe passed the five million passenger mark on cruises in 2010. To keep a lot of people happy in different languages is a challenge. Twenty nationalities made up the crew of the Concordia, and half of them struggled with English. When the cruising Tower of Babel hit a rock, it added to the confusion.