Cruise ships and the damage they cause to destinations

Mental image of cruise ship passengers

I’ve never been on a cruise ship, and I can’t see myself ever wanting to. This is partly due to the image I have of what a cruise holiday would be like – being surrounded by fat, elderly Americans who care about little but being able to graze on a buffet for 24 hours.

Now I’m sure that this is little more than an unfair stereotype – there are probably cruises with a younger clientele and more adventurous mindset. But the fact remains that whenever I’ve been in a destination where herds are pouring off the cruise ship, I’ve shuddered. I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and I want no part of it.

And I’ve seen it rather a lot. I somehow seem to spend a lot of time in destinations that attract cruise ships. In some places – such as Sydney – the passengers slip into the mix. It’s the others – small islands, Caribbean destinations and pretty coastal towns – where the effects of the cruise industry become startlingly obvious.

There are many other objections to the cruise industry – the environmental damage being one of the major ones – but the thing I hate is how cruise ships can transform a destination.

 

Independent vs group travel

I almost always travel independently; just me on my own, or perhaps with my girlfriend in tow when she can get time off work. And doing this in a destination served by cruise ships can be extraordinarily hard work.

Everything becomes geared to the quick influx of people (and, thus, money). Every taxi driver on the island will head down to the cruise ship terminal in a bid for business, and tours that haven’t been running for days are reserved solely for the new arrivals.

And over time, tourism products in the destination become geared to the cruise ship passengers. Due to the time constraints, this inevitably means a glut of products that try to cover as much as possible in a few hours, and very few that go into any depth about anything. As sure as a destination becomes flooded with cruise ship passengers, it becomes flooded with cynical quick fix products designed to extract as much money as possible in a short space of time.

The cruise ship passengers are the Holy Grail, and because they can dominate a market so much, everything becomes geared towards them. This is tremendously disheartening for the independent traveller and horrifically damaging to the destination in the long term.

 

Long term reputation

Make no mistake about it, shipping people in for a few hours and then watching them depart is no way to build a robust tourism industry. It’s like gorging on chocolate bars every day – you feel great at the time, but in the long term it causes a lot of harm.

The people destinations really need to be attracting are the ones that will come for a week or two, pay to stay in the hotels, pay to eat in the restaurants and drink in the bars. They’re the ones that will do numerous tours and activities whilst there, and will spread the money around. Yes, they won’t spend as much in one hit, but they’ll spend more overall. And more to the point, they’re more likely to recommend the place to others.

This sort of visitor is exactly the sort that will stop coming if they feel they’re not welcome and that everything is aimed at the cruise ships. The destination will gain a long term reputation as not having much to it, being somewhat unfriendly and hard work. And that reputation will be hard to shake.

 

Who to blame?

It’s hard to blame anyone in particular for the way cruise ships affect a destination. The cruise ship firms are just doing their job; so are the people trying to cater for the passengers. But local governments and tourism authorities should probably be thinking long and hard about their approach. Should they really be trying to encourage as many cruise ships as possible to visit? And in doing so, are they fostering a quick buck culture?

Tags: Caribbean, cruise, environment, green travel, independent travel, Sydney, tours