THOMSON cruise general manager Nick Lighton has been elected as a member of the Passenger Shipping Association’s management council after beating off the competition from two river cruising candidates.
He won a vote that had been contested by Richard Esdale, UK director of Peter Deilman River Cruises and Graham Clubb, managing director of KD River Cruises.
Stena Line route director for the Irish Sea, Nigel Cureton, was elected unopposed to the council.
Lighton and Cureton were elected to replace Cathy Jackson from Cunard Lineand Stena Line’s John Higgs respectively.
The PSA management council has seven members drawn from the cruising industry and five from the ferry industry.
Meanwhile, PSA director Bill Gibbons has forecast a slowdown in the growth rate of the cruising industry, which has achieved passenger increases of more than 20% for the past four years.
But he said 2000 should be a bumper year for the trade since cruises will be a popular holiday choice for the millennium.
Gibbons added that the hazard of fires on-board cruise ships was becoming a very serious issue for the industry.
He said that the fire on-board Carnival Ecstasy had been well handled, but the fire that subsequently led to the sinking of Sun Vista earlier in the year had left some “unanswered questions”.