When Royal Caribbean receive a ‘gentle nudge’.

You will find am article published today from Teplis Travel headed” Bahamas persuades Royal Caribbean to tone down warnings about crime”.

The article says: “Dionisio D’Aguilar, minister of tourism and aviation for the island nation, told the Nassau Tribune this week that he employed “gentle nudging” to persuade Royal Caribbean to drop an “unwarranted” passenger advisory being distributed to disembarking passengers of the cruise line’s Anthem of the Seas.

“D’Aguilar reached out to Miami-based Royal Caribbean after several cruise industry websites reported on the letter, signed by Anthem of the Seas’ captain Srecko Ban.”

The article than went on to say Ban’s letter was posted on various websites including Travelpuse.com.

D’Aguilar contacted the Nassau Tribune, saying that he felt “blindsided.”

However, the article goes on to say:
“But the Tribune story noted that the Anthem captain’s warning mirrored a January 2018 travel advisory by the U.S. State Department, telling tourists to “exercise increased caution in the Bahamas because of crime” and avoid the Over the Hill and Fish Fry areas at night.

“The Canadian government warned tourists to avoid the same two areas in its own advisory on Dec. 20. Both countries’ advisories listed armed robberies, burglaries, purse snatchings, theft, fraud and sexual assaults as the most common crimes against travelers.”

Now Royal Caribbean, through this “gentle nudging” has withdrawn its crime warning and replaced it with “a more generalized warning … that does not mention Nassau by name and could be taken as referring to any of its ports of call.”

The power of big business.

Next we have the nonsense of cruise-lines doing away with plastic straws. They are looking at helping save the environment from plastics.

Well done, except…..

“According to leading independent German pollution analyst Axel Friedrich, a single large cruise ship will emit over five tonnes of NOX emissions, and 450kg of ultra fine particles a day.”

Bill Hemmings, marine expert at Brussels-based Transport and Environment group said: “These [the new mega ships] ships burn as much fuel as whole towns. They use a lot more power than container ships and even when they burn low sulphur fuel, it’s 100 times worse than road diesel.”

Apparently crime in the Bahamas has gone down over the last few years except for murders. That has gone up.

And now through gentle nudging, all ports of call are the same – infested with crime and if you’re not murdered on the streets the cruise ship you are on will contribute to killing you.

I wouldn’t have thought any of this was good for the cruise industry.

Why can’t they just be honest?

With a gentle nudge in the right direction.