Since last week’s Carnival Triumph debacle, Carnival Corp., owner of the cruise line, has had a lot of explaining to do. Concerned consumers as well as analysts have suggested that, as it expands its operations to more ships with higher passenger capacities, Carnival needs to confront the engineering related problems that led to the Triumph’s 4,200 passengers and crew floating helpless for five days in the Gulf of Mexico. But there are others who are taking this opportunity to critique some facets of the cruise industry that otherwise go unmentioned.
Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story on Charleston, South Carolina’s experiences as a coastal city balancing the economic benefits of cruise ships against their cultural impact. The South Carolina Ports Authority’s proposed $35 million cruise terminal would, according to port officials, bring $37 million a year to Charleston in cruise traffic. But the terminal has found opponents in preservationist groups and homeowners, worried that an already compromised historic district in Charleston would be threatened by cruise industry expansion. These groups and homeowners understand that while the cruise lines bring business, their loyalties are to their passengers and their shareholders, not to the cities that they use for their ports.
Charleston’s unease is surely warranted when one looks at what’s happened to a city like Mobile, Alabama. In 2004, Mobile eagerly sought out Carnival Cruise Lines to use it as a port, ultimately winning the cruise line over when Mobile borrowed $20 million to build a cruise ship terminal. In 2011, however, Carnival left Mobile, citing a lack of popularity and rising fuel costs. Never mind that in 2007 Carnival Cruise Lines named Mobile its port of the year, or that business was going so well in 2009 that Mobile spent almost $3 million on a new gangway. Carnival, like all others major players in the cruise industry, has no reason or incentive to stay loyal to cities that cannot afford to give them the best deal. Our vulnerable American cities are no match for a cruise industry that settles where it pleases, without any regard for the well being of our citizens.
Basically, I am arguing that the cruise industry’s insistence that the events around the Triumph are being blown out of proportion should be dutifully ignored. Especially as the cruise industry wins victories in Alaska for the creation of wastewater mixing zones that effectively position the state as a prime destination for the expanding industry, we who are concerned with the environmental and cultural costs of this expansion must, at least, take critical notice.
Although any regulation of the cruise industry has already proved to be an immensely complicated task, attempts remain incredibly important. In 2009, Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois and Representative Sam Farr from California introduced the Clean Cruise Ship Act as a means of establishing “national standards for discharges from cruise vessels.” Unfortunately, the bill died in Congress a year later, referred to the Subcommittee on Water Resources and the Environment. What the act would have done, among other things, is require the US Coast Guard to put an independent inspector on each ship to monitor how it discharges waste. This would have been a solution for the EPA, which has already identified the problems of cruise ship wastewater discharges but has not yet devised a plan for acting on their findings.
Cruise ships are American economic and social spaces; most of the 20 million passengers who went on cruises worldwide in 2012 were from the US. If we continue to thoughtlessly sponsor and let go unregulated an industry that devalues our cultural history and our environment (along with our ideal that hard work should pay off), we will contribute to the undermining of some of our nation’s most sacred values. Let’s keep a watch on the cruise industry and remember what really matters.
From a economic point of view, your opinion is troubling.
Consider this sentence of yours:
“Carnival, like all others major players in the cruise industry, has no reason or incentive to stay loyal to cities that cannot afford to give them the best deal.”
First, why should Carnival, or any other cruise company, “stay loyal to cities that cannot afford them the best deal”?
Are cities entitled to have cruise lines at their ports?
If a cruise line moves to a new city because they do better business there, the cruise lines generate more profits (than it would have by staying at the first city). Those profits can be used to create new cruise routes or a higher-quality cruise experience. So, the customer when cruise lines seek the maximum profit.
Next, consider your sentence : “Our vulnerable American cities are no match for a cruise industry that settles where it pleases, without any regard for the well being of our citizens.”
Your language makes it sounds like cruise liners are a ruthless armies pillaging cities. Do the city residents who take the cruises think this? Do the city residents who work for the cruises think this?
*the customer wins when…
among other typos (the comment feature is kinda clunky when writing long posts)
Hi Oliver,
Thanks for your comment. I think you might be conflating America’s interests with the cruise industry’s interests. While it is true that Americans make up most of the cruise industry’s passengers, only 3% of Americans went on cruises in 2011. That percentage is estimated to increase over time because of, as you mentioned, the cruise industry’s ability to move to cheaper ports and provide better low cost services to its customers. But if the cruise industry needs only to ensure that 3, 4, or even 5% of Americans are satisfied with its services, that still leaves over 90% of America whose interests it has no regard for. Like any major corporation, Carnival, Royal Caribbean and others have obligations primarily to their customers and shareholders. It is therefore misleading, I think, to say that one, customers of the cruise industry are anything close to a majority in this country, or that two, the cruise industry has the cultural history, environmental concerns, or economic well-being of America’s coastal cities in mind when it decides where to look for ports.
No one can argue that the cruise industry does not bring major short term economic benefits to America. It just so happens that the externalities of the cruise industry’s current presence here will cause generations down the line a lot of problems, e.g. polluted oceans, loss of culture, and urban decay. These costs, I think, far outweigh the contemporary benefits of an unregulated cruise industry.
This argument could be applied to nearly any industry. Nearly every industry only serves a small percentage of the American people compared to the population as a whole. Many of those same industries also have negative externalities, including “loss of culture, and urban decay.” Chemical manufacturing companies that produce drugs that save lives often have high negative externalities in the form of air pollution. But that does not mean the chemical manufacturing industry is bad for the American people.