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Budget Travel: A theory about the itineraries of the new mega-cruise ships
That enormous, new, 6,000-passenger cruise ship, Oasis of the Seas, that you've been reading so much about, will begin sailing an odd itinerary this coming May. Every other week throughout the year, it will devote three of its six days of weekly operation to simply wandering at sea, without stopping anywhere. On two other days, it will go on one day to a "private beach" called Labadee on the coast of Haiti, and on another day to another private beach and artificial village called Costa Maya on the coast of Mexico. On only one remaining day will it stop at an actual Caribbean port inhabited by real people.
Is this an accident? An idiosyncratic decision by a cruise line official? Far from it. The moment you begin analyzing the itineraries of the other gigantic new ships that have begun sailing or are about to (the 4,300-passenger Freedom of the Seas, the 4,200-passenger Norwegian Epic, the 3,800-passenger Carnival Dream), you find that all of these humongous vessels, on at least every other week and sometimes every week, will be devoting three of their six days of sailing to simply wandering at sea, without stopping. On other alternating weeks, they will spend one of their remaining three days at either a private beach in the Bahamas or a private beach in Mexico.
So, in addition to offering a new kind of onboard experience filled with toys and games, the four new gigantic ships – larger than any others - will be cruising unusual itineraries, to say the least. Their routes will be designed to keep all their thousands of passengers together for almost all of the cruise, and walled off from the cruel realities of nearby islands. Foreign travel will not be their specialty.
Why has this policy been adopted? I have three theories:
(1) By devoting half of their six days per week to simply sailing at sea, the ultra-large ships retain all the income that passengers would normally spend in ports. Instead of that income going to land-based restaurants, bars and shops, it goes to restaurants, bars and shops within the cruise ship. Instead of income going to land-based casinos, it is spent at ship casinos. Instead of income being spent at jewelry and liquor shops on land, it is spent at jewelry and liquor shops at sea. This is all so painfully obvious, and points up the desperate need of the cruise lines to earn extraordinary amounts from onboard spending to pay back their billion-dollar investments in these humongous new ships.
(2) By featuring stops at fake villages like Costa Maya or fenced-in private beaches like Labadee (surrounded by barbed wire and guards to keep out the unfortunate people of Haiti), the cruise lines again retain much of the spending that passengers would otherwise direct to foreign entrepreneurs. Obviously, the merchants that one finds on the "private beaches" and fake villages will be mainly in the employ of the cruise lines.
(3) And finally, the ships are so large that they really can't go to interesting small ports, such as those of Grenada, Dominica, St. Lucia or elsewhere. The only actual ports able to receive them are the overcrowded docks of St. Thomas, St. Maarten and Nassau.
And that's why the giant new ships will spend most of their time wandering the open sea or heading to "private beaches," while their passengers play with toys and games on deck.
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