My four o’clock appointment on Wednesday was with Richard Branleur Couilles-Baiser, formerly of Montreal, Quebec, but today the chief industry lobbyist for the International Alliance of Holiday Cruise Ship Associations, a trade organization headquartered here in Washington DC. He strode smartly into my office, tossed his briefcase on the coffee table and perched jauntily on the couch.
“Nice to see you again, Tom,” he opened. “It’s been a while.”
“I don’t believe you’ve become a stranger on my account,” I japed.
“No, you can’t be blamed for that,” he smartly returned. “It’s just that the IAHCSA board doesn’t like to shell out for hourly fees like yours unless the situation is… well, pretty damn dire, actually.”
“That’s certainly understandable,” I acknowledged. “And what pretty damn dire situation have the IAHCSA members gotten themselves into, that allows the board of their premier lobbying organization to rationalize paying hourly consultant rates like mine?”
“Nothing less,” he related, “than the worst run of bad luck you can possibly imagine.”
“You’re referring,” I surmised, “to the unprecedented string of cruise ship mishaps, accidents, misfortunes and downright disasters that have occurred lately?”
“Exactly,” he sighed. “It came to a head with the Explorer of the Seas norovirus calamity earlier this week. That bug is hardly ever fatal, but Jesus, is it a nasty thing to have! The victims develop pounding, throbbing headaches that would put the worst migraine attack to shame, get so nauseous they can’t even stand up, double over in shooting, intense pain with abdominal cramps, projectile vomit uncontrollably all over the place, produce rivers of watery, absolutely reeking, stinking diarrhea, and in some cases they even experience a loss of taste.”
“Loss of taste?” I asked. “How can the doctors tell?”
“Huh?” Richard grunted with a puzzled expression.
“It just seems odd to me.” I remarked.
“What does?” Richard inquired.
“Since when,” I responded, “did people who take their holidays on cruise ships have any taste to begin with?”
“Okay, okay,” Richard shrugged, nonchalant. “Yeah, I know, the people who choose to enjoy cruise ships on their vacations are unsophisticated, middle-brow philistines who are, shall we say, easily amused, and neither you nor I would want to eat lunch at a bistro on Capitol Hill – or even spend five minutes at a Metro stop, actually – with the likes of them, if we could possibly avoid doing so. But damn it, Tom, the world’s full of vapid, shallow, boring people like that, and that’s the way the Good Lord made them, and He must love them because look how many of them there are! And who are we to begrudge them a few days of harmless enjoyment lying around on deck chairs getting sunburned reading senseless, half-witted, trashy novels, watching lackluster performances of mediocre live entertainment, engaging in hours of mindless organized activities, goofing around on the water slide at the pool, drinking rail booze like fish at a totally ordinary and unexceptional bar, gambling away their savings in a tacky casino and pigging out at endless buffets of cheap, indifferently prepared food?”
“Point taken,” I conceded. “After all, people like that have to do something with their excess time and money, don’t they? And I suppose it is, as you say, harmless – unless, of course, that endless buffet of cheap, indifferently prepared food is contaminated with epidemic Caliciviridae gastroenteritis. Then you’ve got a cruise ship full of retching, roiling, writhing Babbitts – and Babbittettes – overloading their cabin toilets with gallons of frothy, flocculent, freely flowing foaming feces.”
“Formidable, frightening facts to face, my friend,” he observed.
“And that’s not half of it,” I commented, “if what’s been reported about your industry over the last few years is true. The Carnival Triumph spent eight days without power, floating under the broiling sun in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico – no air conditioning and no septic system, either.”
“And the media!” Richard wailed. “CNN had a field day! They gave it wall-to-wall coverage – you’d think it was a hostage crisis or something! That kind of stuff murders our business, you know!”
“Then there was the Celebrity Mercury,” I continued. “That had a norovirus outbreak just as bad as the Explorer.”
“Pretty much,” he nodded. “That was the one where somebody coined the term ‘poop cruise,’ I think.”
“And the Seabourn Spirit incident,” I added, “where a cruise ship was attacked by pirates with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades while sailing one hundred miles off the coast of Somalia. And the Norwegian Dawn, which had over sixty cabins flooded with seawater after it got hit by a seventy-foot rogue wave. And, of course, there’s the Costa…”
“Don’t say it!” Richard protested, reflexively holding up his hands in a defensive gesture. “Let’s just not go there! The IAHCSA stipulates that our member have some problems, okay? And due to the… occurrences at sea which have taken place because of those problems, we’re now at the point where not only fifty-eight percent of those who have never been on a cruise ship say they’re less likely to do so this year than last, we’ve also got to contend with the fact that forty-three percent of veteran cruisers feel the same way. Our members have had to slash prices just to keep their boats full, and now, after this latest poop cruise on the Explorer of the Seas, everybody’s going to have to cut prices even more! So tell me, Tom, what can be done about this crappy situation?”
“Let’s look at the facts,” I suggested. What’s going on here? First, you have a hygiene problem. Second, you have a hardware, equipment, machinery and infrastructure problem. Third, you have a crew competence problem. Fourth, you have the biggest problem of all.”
“What’s that? What’s the biggest problem of all?” Richard wondered.
“Your members’ business model involves putting thousands of clueless bozos in a huge ship and taking them out on the high seas,” I said.
“Um… well… yeah,” Richard affirmed, “that’s what we do, alright. What about it?”
“The essential flaw in your business model,” I noted, “is that the oceans of this world are dangerous places, and there’s nothing within your members’ power which could ever control or change that. Your members’ fundamental character flaws are the same ones Joseph Bruce Ismay had – arrogance and hubris. They fail to realize that they cannot simply build a ship that is so large and elaborate that the constant, inherent, unchanging deadly hazards of the sea will not overcome it. Furthermore, they likewise fail to realize that they cannot expect such a ship to always protect its passengers from the inevitable human shortcomings of its crew.”
“But… but… it’s always been like that!” Richard protested. “The ocean’s always been dangerous, ocean liner crews have always made occasional mistakes, and ocean liner magnates have always been [expletive]-holes! That’s the way of the world.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “it is. However, in times gone by, ocean travel was the only way to get from one continent to another. And notice what I just said there – ‘get from one continent to another.’ Back in the day, people had a very good reason to risk their lives getting on a ship and sailing across an ocean full of storms, rogue waves, submerged reefs, icebergs and pirates. But today, your members expect people to board their vessels and travel hundreds of miles into that exquisitely hazardous environment of the high seas – to do what? Have they ever thought about that? To do what, that those poor, benighted, pathetic little shmucks couldn’t exactly the same on dry land? Nothing, that’s what. And to top it off, your members execute their business model so badly that if the storms, waves, reefs, icebergs or pirates don’t get their passengers, then mechanical failures, idiotic officers or epidemic diseases will.”
“Maybe that’s true,” he objected, “but if you’re about to suggest spending more money to perform more maintenance, hire and train more qualified crew members, or practice better hygiene, forget about it, because we’ve already studied those alternatives very thoroughly. And what we found out was, that spending enough money to significantly reduce the risks due to equipment failures, crew errors or onboard disease contagion below their current levels would put us out of business! Bottom line, Tom – the cruise ship industry is as safe as it’s ever going to be. Given that, do you have any ideas?”
“Certainly,” I assured him. “If those are the circumstances, then my advice would be to sell the danger.”
“Sell the danger?” Richard’s eyebrows raised quizzically.
“Precisely,” I confirmed. “Tell the public, ‘It’s not just a vacation – it’s an adventure!’”
“An adventure?” Richard’s eyes narrowed skeptically as he leaned forward on the couch, nevertheless highly interested. “What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what the dictionary says,” I explained. “Which is, and I quote, ‘an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks.’ I’m recommending you tell them that.”
“The… the… truth?” Richard stammered. “You’re recommending the vacation cruise line industry tell the public… the truth?”
“Yes,” I insisted. “Tell them that getting on a cruise ship with a couple thousand strangers and sailing a couple hundred miles out into the middle of the ocean isn’t just a vacation, it’s an adventure – it’s something that has a real risk of danger and always will.”
“I don’t know,” he fretted. “Telling the public the truth is… um… hell, that’s a risky, dangerous thing to do, too, isn’t it?”
“No doubt about it,” I assured him confidently. “Telling the public that taking a cruise ship is an adventure would be an adventure in its own right.”
Richard leaned forward even more, and spoke in a lowered voice. “You know, Tom, I’m not so sure the IAHCSA members are, in fact, all that… adventurous.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” I posited. “We’ll only know the answer if you are adventurous enough to propose the concept.”
Richard pondered for several minutes in silence, then stood, picked up his briefcase, walked to my desk, leaned over and got in my face. “Provided you join me for the rest of this ninety minute consultation down the street at the Round Robin Bar while I knock back several shots of single malt scotch, I guess I’d be willing to give that a try.”