The mood in the cruise industry is
positive, according to professionals.
“The cruise lines are making money
which is important because if we’re not making money, we don’t stay in
business,” said Michele Paige, president of the Florida-Caribbean Cruise
Association.
The yearly Florida-Caribbean Cruise
Conference held this year in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, brought
together 15 cruise lines operating more than 100 vessels in the region.
‘How can we get better?’
The conference featured a number of
workshops, including best practices, sales practices, marketing and analysing
the challenges 2010 has presented, while also looking at what could be better
done in 2011.
“It’s very important to be able to
understand the cruise industry… not burying your head in the sand and saying,
‘it was bad’ but, ‘how was it bad and how can we get better?’
“We worked on improving the
destination experience. It’s very important to have the right aspects for the
passengers when they get to the destination: excursions, shopping, restaurants,
they all have to be working together and of course, most important is
transportation. If you don’t facilitate the passengers, how are they going to
get from the ship to where they are going? We worked in depth on each one of
those issues,” Ms Paige said.
It is crucial for the association
to work closely with its partner destinations in order to meet the needs of the
passengers, she said.
“We take people where they want to
go and they’re looking for value. They’re willing to spend money, but in order
to spend money they need to be met with the right criteria to get off the
vessel. If they’re not met by [what they expect, then] they’ll stay on board
and we don’t want a ship full of people. We bring them to the destinations in
order to have a good time because otherwise at the end of the cruise they’re
going to say, ‘why did you bring me here?’”
Ms Paige added that insurance was
also discussed in some detail.
“The majority of our passengers are
from North America and we have to have the necessary insurance in place for the
cruise lines to be able to sell shore excursions. And even if you don’t have
your shore excursions sold on board, it’s very important to have the necessary
insurance just in case something happens.
“In order for the proper insurance
to be available, the FCCA has facilitated with an insurance provider to be able
to have tour operator insurance that is available to shore excursion providers,
to the standard of what’s required of the cruise lines,” she explained.
Disaster preparedness
The cruise association president
added that the conference also focused on preparedness for natural disasters.
“With all the horrible natural
disasters that have seemed to be flooding us over the past years, we are taking
on the issue of disaster preparedness: How do we all work together?
“How you respond and how you
communicate to all of your partners is very important. Sometimes, 24 hours is
too long to be able to have a series of communications, [so] to be able to have
a plan in place before anything happens (is very useful).”
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