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Cruise-line companies are building private Caribbean play zones
- trevyn 7y agohttps://outline.com/Sm9UCL https://outline.com/Sm9UCL
- acd 7y agoIt means tourist pay money to cruise line. Cruise line keeps most of the money. Local economy benefits a lot less from tourist. Cruise line ships is often registered in tax havens.
- idunno246 7y agoI’ve been to the Disney cruise private island. It’s interesting, there’s almost no full time employees there. The ship crew gets off and works the island while you are there. But even if you go on say an Alaska cruise, which is entirely in the USA, the “towns” that you stop in exist solely for the cruise ships. The stores are the same junk at every stop, often owned by the cruise lines, unless you walk to the edge and maybe get something local or family run.
- Nursie 7y agoCountries around the world seem to slowly be waking up to this - Cruise ships pollute like hell, make destinations crowded and less pleasant for residents and 'regular' tourists, and also attempt to capture all of the spending of their passengers anyway, limiting any economic benefits. European cities they frequent are some of the worst for SOx and NOx pollution on the continent and a single line, Carnival, emitted more than all of Europe's cars last year (by a factor of 10 IIRC). Barcelona has started to realise that hoards that rush off the boat, have lunch and rush back on are not worth the meagre boost it gives them. The cruise industry needs to clean up its act.
- conjectures 7y agoAlso c.f. Venice.
- laumars 7y agoCoincidentally I was in Venice for the first time 2 weeks ago. Absolutely beautiful place and I 100% agree with the locals complaints about cruise ships - it really does ruin the touristy parts of Venice. Thankfully you don't need to walk far to get a more authentic Venetian experience.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- maccard 7y ago> Carnival, emitted more than all of Europe's cars last year (by a factor of 10 IIRC). Something is always going to be the worst polluter. If the people who took a carnival cruise flew around the world instead, what would the impact be? (And what would happen to the fuel that those cruise ships are currently burning?) It's still a horriffic stat, but I'd love a nuanced discussion on it!
- Angostura 7y agoThese figures are from 2006 - so you need to factor in improvements in engineering since then - but The Guardian crunched some figures and said “According to our calculations, a cruiseliner such as Queen Mary 2 emits 0.43kg of CO2 per passenger mile, compared with 0.257kg for a long-haul flight (even allowing for the further damage of emissions being produced in the upper atmosphere” So the answer would appear to be “jump on the plane”.
- clort 7y agoThere might be a nuance missing, in that if you compare a plane journey vs a cruise you are of course not comparing like to like if you only consider 'CO2 per passenger mile' as aeroplanes are used to travel further than a cruise ship. I don't know the mileage that they actually cover on a cruise, but at 20kts they could cover 480 miles in 24 hours and bearing in mind that they are spending time in port it will be less than that. Lets estimate 300 miles per day, so a 2 week cruise could rack up ~4200 sea miles. => 1806 Kg of CO2 If I flew from Heathrow to Antigua for those 2 weeks, that would be ~8000 air miles. => 2056 Kg of CO2
- chrisco255 7y agoGoing on a cruise is like a whirlwind tour of the Caribbean as it is. You get, like 6 hours to try to cram in as much of Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Cozumel, etc as you can and then it's back to the boat and on to the next stop. If you really want to get to know a country it's not the best way to travel.
- AznHisoka 7y agoFor some people that’s OK. They don’t want just a short tour of the Caribbean, they want a diverse recreationally holiday. a day doing all the cruise activities, a day in the Caribbean, a day just taking it easy in the ship, etc.
- cyberjunkie 7y agoThe Patriot Act recently did a nice episode on cruise-line companies. Just watched it last night.
- wumms 7y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nCT8h8gO1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nCT8h8gO1g
- B1FF_PSUVM 7y agoThe Economist seemed to miss the "private island" angle. The MSC cruise line just announced one: https://www.msccruisesusa.com/en-us/Cruise-Destinations/Caribbean-Antilles/Bahamas/Ocean-Cay-MSC-Marine-Reserve.aspx https://www.msccruisesusa.com/en-us/Cruise-Destinations/Cari... (video player window pops up)
- janlaureys 7y agoThat video looks like the intro of a Black Mirror episode.
- ptah 7y agoAs long as customers are informed and locals are not ripped off it should be ok imo
- beardedman 7y agoI've known people to go on these cruises. They love it. Reading some of the HN comments - why not rather discuss concerns with the business owners who enable the "utter turmoil". Vote with what counts - not soapboxes.
- sdoering 7y agoI once worked for a Cruise Company for some months. I really am shocked at how naive I was back then, when I applied and worked there. Back then I had no idea how bad this form of travel is for the environment, for the visited cities, for the people working below deck, and so on. The people I worked with in the main office of the company were really energetic, loved their product, had a great time launching ship after ship (every year a new ship was launched). It was great working with people who loved what they were doing. Compared to other jobs I had till then. I was there when the new hyped prototype was being put into service. Quite an interesting time. We were allowed to test travel on the new ship. It was a cool experience. From a purely hedonistic perspective. Yeah it felt nice sitting in the sauna, ten decks above see at 6am in the morning and looking out over the waves. It was purely relaxing. But from a more conscious perspective it was doing everything I could to help destroy this world - and I was so abusing the lower deck people. The ones never being seen by guests. They work horrible shifts, are employed with contracts from the tax heaven states the ships are being registered in. I was an employee of the same company - but I had massive employment protections and laws governing how long I work, what is considered overtime, and so on. The served me, made my bed, put coffee on my table. They prepared my food - but they were third or fourth class "citizens" on this ship. I am ashamed looking at it nowadays.
- lopmotr 7y agoIf you had the power, would you fire them and be the one to give them their notice in person? If they asked why, what would you tell them? "For your own good"?
- mozey 7y agoInstead of asking would you fire them for their own good, rather ask, do you employ them for their own good?
- sokoloff 7y agoIf they voluntarily show up, I think they are judging that I am offering them something better (or at least as good) as their next best option. That’s one formulation of “their own good”.
- radicalbyte 7y agoA cruise ship always strikes me as being a slightly more upscale caravan holiday. You're stuck in a metal box with either a lot of old middle class people or a load of drunk lower class yobs. Only unlike a caravan you're stuck on it.
- godid 7y agoPerhaps, if you shared a single caravan with hundreds of other people. But other than that I do not think it’s alike at all as you are not dependant on a crew for subsistence nor is your freedom to move/explore restricted in a caravan. Either way both can be very fun holidays if you are willing to see past class prejudices.
- radicalbyte 7y agoIt's not so much the class prejudices, it's the booze prejudice. I don't socialize with my wifes upper-middle-class colleagues because they like their wine a little too much. My worst ever holiday memories are being stuck in a caravan in the late 1980s in wet Wales with way too little room and way too many loud drunk people who kept going until 4am every single night. Cruise ships are like that only you're completely at the whim of the cruise line. You have 0 freedom and you have to deal with all the tax-evading fake-flag BS which seems to rule the sea.
- peteretep 7y ago> paid for in US dollars, never the Haitian gourde Presumably the government is getting paid in US dollars too, which is a nice fx source > Haitians not employed by Royal Caribbean cannot enter. Can Haitians generally roam free on private property? > Caribbean countries are “basically giving away parcels of land” What now? Do we call all foreign private ownership "giving away"? Poor article from The Economist telling us nothing other than rich travelers to Haiti don't want to deal with the downsides of it, which is a story as old as time.
- 0xfaded 7y agoMost western countries don't allow beach ownership, and technically the US doesn't either but has its loop holes. Some European countries even have the "right to pass" over private land if required to access to public land. I suppose the question worth asking is the average Haitian better off from the economic activity generated from the private parcel.
- romanovcode 7y agoI really hope that these ships will get banned in the next 10 years.
- adaml_623 7y agoA question interesting to me: Are cruise ships worse or better than package, tour or individual holidays? We have millions of people all over the world who want to travel and see the world and enjoy themselves. Assuming we don't ban individual travel we probably want to work out the most environmentally friendly (and socially responsible) way of enabling this. A network of railway lines across the northern hemisphere connecting to a fleet of wind powered cruise ships? But paying staff a socially responsible wage might push the cost of a holiday up above the once a year point. And figuring in the real environmental cost would cause issues as well.
- jasonkester 7y agoThis seems like a net win for the rest of us. If you've ever been on Roatan or someplace similar when a big cruise ship comes in, you'll know the feeling: Most of the time it's a sleepy little beach town with cheap accommodation and beers, and friendly local folk going about their business. Then one day you wake up and it's "Welcome To Jamaica, Mon!!!" All the colorful townspeople are out in their Traditional Island Dress, doing their Traditional Island Dance to the Traditional Island Music in the streets. Everybody suddenly has piles of overpriced tourist junk to sell you, and those cheap beers are now $8 each. Giant flotillas of inflated red kayaks bob around in the bay, carrying inflated pink tourists in inflated orange life vests. Lots of pictures are taken of another Island Paradise. Then things pack up, heaps of garbage are swept aside, and the place goes back to its old, pleasant, self again. Life is so good on the "backpacker" side of that experience, and so bad on the "cruiser" side, that it's good to hear that they're finally just sequestering them all away in a single place. If any of them ever want to experience the Carribbean in its actual form, it'll hopefully be waiting there unspoiled.
- tgafpg 7y agoThis author is just realizing this now? After decades? Newsflash, buildings grow beyond 10 stories!