US Senator initiates crackdown on erring cruise liners

No later than this week, people booking cruises on the three largest cruise lines will see something new on the company websites: an index of major crimes reported on board their ships since late 2010, including allegations of rape and murder.

But the announcement did little to pacify one of the industry’s top critics — U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. — who has introduced legislation intended to shine more light on an industry that in 2012 carried 10 million passengers from U.S. ports and resulted in $19.6 billion in U.S. spending.

“Consumers deserve to know what rights and protections they have and, more importantly, do not have on their cruise,” said Rockefeller, who last week hauled industry leaders before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that he chairs.

Rockefeller has accused the cruise industry of downplaying serious safety concerns — from crime to ship operations — while giving unhappy or mistreated passengers little recourse against the industry.

The decision to post crime rates — information that critics have long maintained should be public record — was announced by cruise leaders at a congressional hearing last week. It will apply initially to the three largest cruise lines, Carnival, Norwegian and Royal Caribbean, with smaller lines expected to follow suit by reporting statistics to an industry trade group sometime in the future.

It was a pre-emptive effort by an industry that’s had a rough recent history — a Carnival ship stranded for days in the Gulf of Mexico after an engine-room fire and another forced to cut short a cruise because of an onboard blaze — and is facing increasing scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

The US senator’s measure would force the cruise industry to provide a “plain language” explanation of the fine print in cruise contracts and also establish a federal toll-free hotline for passenger complaints. The bill also would require the industry to make public the same crime reports that cruise leaders said they would put on their websites this week.

source: http://www.ufs.com.ph/us-senator-initiates-crackdown-on-erring-cruise-liners