At a congressional hearing held in Washington D.C. yesterday, the CEO’s of Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian all pledged to make their cruise lines more transparent when it comes to reporting crimes that are committed aboard their ships.
According to Adam Goldstein, CEO and President of Royal Caribbean, all crimes alleged to have occurred aboard their ships will now appear publicly on their website. The same policy of public reporting will also be adopted by Carnival and Norwegian. According to Goldstein, “The public will find a compilation of allegations of crime that occur onboard our ships around the world, on all itineraries, by all guests and crew.” Goldstein continued to explain how the public listings would be beneficial to the industry, as it would show that crime aboard cruise ships is rare when compared to other sectors.
In addition, Adam Goldstein also announced that many major cruise lines are in the process of rewriting their passenger contracts to be fully compliant with the recently adopted Cruise Passenger Bill of Rights. While doubts were raised if the passenger contracts would take precedent over the Bill of Rights in an emergency situation, Goldstein responded, “To the extent that there is any question, we would not as an industry have agreed to the Bill of Rights if we didn’t expect it to apply in all instances.” He continued to explain that the cruise lines are rewriting their cruise contracts to ease the confusion of which document takes priority in an emergency situation.
As of now, there is no official date for when the new cruise contracts will debut, but Goldstein explained that the industry is in the process of rewriting them. The online crime listing will take effect on August 1st, 2013. All crimes that have been alleged since the last quarter of 2010 will appear with all other alleged crimes to the present day.
