The phasing out of the Passenger Shipping Association and its rebirth as the UK arm of an international cruise association (Clia) marks the end of an era. It also makes sense, says Lee Hayhurst
Given the growth of the cruise industry over the past three decades, this week’s announcement of the formation of a new global organisation came as no surprise.
Through next year the former US industry body, the Cruise Lines International Association (Clia), will establish an international footprint with regional offshoots including Clia UK.
The Passenger Shipping Association, the body that will become Clia UK, was formed 55 years ago in a situation very different from today.
It was established largely in response to an emerging challenge to ocean-liner travel from a new form of transport: the jet aircraft.
At the time, the idea of a two-week leisure cruise in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean or the Black Sea was a world away from the point-to-point voyages operated by the world’s fleet of liners.
As recently as the 1970s, P&O Cruises had just one ship, the Canberra. Now it has eight, including two capable of carrying 3,000 passengers.
Only one genuine liner remains in operation today – Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 – while some 300 cruise ships operate globally, carrying more than 20 million people each year.
The size and scale of the industry are epitomised by the big-two operators Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and Carnival Corporation. The latter has grown in the space of 40 years to become one of the world’s most-valuable businesses.
The former is close to sourcing more than half its customers from outside the US and has commissioned and built the two largest cruise ships ever constructed: Oasis and Allure of the Seas. Together these can accommodate more than 10,000 customers plus crew.
While the cruise industry has become truly global, the ferry industry has remained a localised industry. So it makes sense to have an organisation that will represent cruise exclusively while the UK ferry sector, with its more regional requirements, will sit in the British Chamber of Shipping.
The new, global Clia will incorporate the work of nine groups around the world, with Clia UK sure to be prominent due to its expertise in the planet’s second-largest cruise market.
Other regional organisations will, no doubt, appear as lines source customers from an increasingly diverse range of markets, requiring travel agent training and customer-awareness campaigns.
Yet one of the more pressing jobs will be to represent the industry’s interests in Brussels and Washington where most relevant regulations emerge.
The sector’s rise to prominence means cruise is under the microscope today more than ever.
The Costa Concordia sinking in January, in which 32 people died, captured the world’s headlines. But thankfully such tragedies remain rare.
The UK media has turned attention instead to some of the industry’s practices. Issues such as flags of convenience, staff pay and conditions, and cruise ships’ environmental record mirror concerns about the operations of many large, commercially successful sectors onshore.
However, it is no less imperative that the industry be seen to address these issues than it is that Starbucks react to concerns about its corporate tax bill.
Indeed, the cruise sector seems to attract some of the most vociferous critics of mass tourism, as a recent article by travel writer David Whitley on The Guardian’s Comment Is Free website shows.
For its part, the sector denies it is under-regulated (and no business sector ever wants to see more regulation), pointing to the numerous organisations that govern shipping and safety at sea.
New rules governing sulphur emissions in special control areas, which could see many older ships retired, are just one issue to contend with. So it will be helpful to have the new Clia represent the industry at international forums, including those of the International Maritime Organisation in London and the International Labour Organisation in Geneva.
As the industry likes to point out, cruising is an inherently international undertaking with ships sailing between nations and easily moved to different jurisdictions.
While parts of the sector might sometimes use this to warn off regulators, it underlines how much a sector that supports 753,000 livelihoods and has an annual, global economic impact of $100 billion needs a single voice.
Yet maybe the biggest challenge is that a growing middle class and a more socially and environmentally-aware class of customer is sailing on cruise ships these days.
Clia will be expected to state clearly how these customers can, with a clear conscience, choose cruise over other forms of travel and tourism.