{"id":26841,"date":"2016-01-27T01:00:18","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T09:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=26841"},"modified":"2016-01-27T01:00:18","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T09:00:18","slug":"wednesday-151","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=26841","title":{"rendered":"Royal Caribbean And Haiti\u2026A Problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Allure\"<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a blog about Royal Caribbean<\/a>, Haiti<\/a> and reading between the lines. A lot of people are doing that these days following what appeared to be a fairly innocent incident this month: ships skipping Labadee<\/a> because of a group of protesters on the water offshore.<\/span><\/p>\n

Little more than that was said\u2026at first. What has been said since may turn into a much bigger snowball by the time it gets to the bottom of the hill, as the analogy goes.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to people on ships that turned around, Royal Caribbean officials said the protests \"Haiti-1\"had to do with upcoming (and postponed) elections in Haiti. After passengers dug deeper, they found the protesters were holding up signs because Royal Caribbean was not living up to its promise to build schools, hospitals and self-esteem in one of the world\u2019s most impoverished countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a result, more people than ever are re-examining the cruise line\u2019s \u201cprivate resort\u201d known as Labadee. As a result, critics like maritime lawyer Jim Walker<\/a> are ripping Royal Caribbean in commentaries<\/a> \u2014 logically presented \u2014 for making excessive profits at the expense of Haitian people who thought they were going to benefit from the development of Labadee.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a result, now people are questioning why Royal Caribbean ships have returned to Labadee, as they did this week. More and more the answer appears to be money. Period. Going to another port deprives the cruise line of an enormous revenue stream. The \u201cprivate resort\u201d is waterfront property the cruise line bought for a song and it\u2019s \"Labadee-zipline\"surrounded\u00a0by barbed-wire fencing to protect passengers who spend millions zip-lining and lounging in cabanas or renting equipment to use on the water, and to keep out poor Haitians who want to sell their crafts and try to escape their poverty.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRoyal Caribbean pays no actual rent of any kind\u2026but its passengers pay a $10 to $12 head tax,\u201d writes\u00a0Walker, who is a well-known thorn in the side of cruise lines but who has probably touched a raw nerve this time.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the head tax goes to the government as \u201crent\u201d then fees for the \u201cworld\u2019s longest zipline\u201d and most of passengers spend in Labadee is likely pure profit for Royal Caribbean. A conservative estimate is that\u2019s about 10,000 visitors every week.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve only been to Labadee once. One of us was sick. We never ventured far enough from Allure of the Seas<\/a> even to see the fence around Labadee. We never met any of the locals, as we usually do. All we really know about it is what we\u2019ve learned from Royal Caribbean, including how it’s dedicated to helping poor Haiti.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s called PR\u2026for public relations. The return of its ships to Labadee solved one problem, but now Royal Caribbean appears to have another.<\/span><\/p>\n

A PR problem, and clearly it’s growing.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the news…<\/strong><\/em><\/u><\/p>\n

\u2022 A\u00a0$450 million multi-year product innovation and ship renovation for Princess
\n\u2022\u00a0Two new ships to push Royal Caribbean\u00a0capacity to four million passengers a year
\n\u2022\u00a0Five Norwegian ships \u2014 the most ever \u2014 going to Europe for summer 2017<\/p>\n

Today at\u00a0<\/span>portsandbows.com<\/span><\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/em>The new Princess restaurant SHARE<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
\nEmerald Princess
\n<\/a>14 nights
\nApril 2, 2016
\nFort Lauderdale<\/a>, Ponta Delgada<\/a>, Lisbon<\/a>, Bilbao<\/a>, Paris<\/a>, Southampton<\/a>
\nInside: $799
\nCost per day: $57<\/strong><\/span>
\nwww.princess.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a blog about Royal Caribbean, Haiti and reading between the lines. A lot of people are doing that these days following what appeared to be a fairly innocent incident this month: ships skipping Labadee because of a group of protesters on the water offshore. Little more than that was said\u2026at first. What has… Continue reading Royal Caribbean And Haiti\u2026A Problem?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,32,31,36,15],"tags":[203,1651,912,2202,72,819,51,2203,35,52,39,1162,40,26,1616,27,957,33,148],"class_list":["post-26841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cruise-industry-news","category-deals","category-ports","category-reviews","category-stories","tag-allure-of-the-seas","tag-critics-of-cruising","tag-cruise-bargains","tag-cruise-complaints","tag-cruise-deals","tag-cruise-news","tag-cruise-ports","tag-cruise-problems","tag-cruises","tag-emerald-princess","tag-haiti","tag-jim-walker","tag-labadee","tag-phil-reimer","tag-port-cancellations","tag-ports-and-bows","tag-princess-cruises","tag-royal-caribbean","tag-transatlantic-cruises","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}