Corona-Virus Impact on Cruise Industry

November 2020

According to the UN WORLD TOURISM ORGANIZATION, there are several factors the cruise industry needs to address to improve its sustainability in a post-pandemic world. One of the most important is addressing its environmental impacts. Waste disposal and treatment, coral reef protection, and the reduction of air and noise pollution should be priorities, not afterthoughts. And the best way to encourage these changes, says Dodds, is to invite the cruise industry to the table. “Whatever it takes for people to change their behavior is what we need to focus on. Rather than shaming people, we need to nudge them. You can catch more bees with honey than you do with vinegar.”

Less than two years ago, a third of the world’s tourism was CONCENTRATED IN JUST 300 CITIES across the globe. That’s more than half a billion tourists, according to the WORLD TOURISM AND TRAVEL COUNCIL, all jostling for gondola rides down Venice canals, trampling the beaches of Bali, and storming the fortresses of Machu Picchu. For travelers, overtourism is, shall we say, inconvenient. It’s longer lines and higher prices and crowds that ruin the view. But for destinations, overtourism can be disastrous with lasting environmental, social, and economic impacts for locals.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for tackling overtourism, but some cities and sites HAVE ALREADY BEGUN IMPLEMENTING PLANS that may help to reset the tourism industry on a larger scale. Simply ending marketing and advertising campaigns has been the recent approach taken by Amsterdam’s tourism board while in Iceland, they’ve ramped up marketing for destinations farther afield than most tourists commonly venture. Encouraging travel year-round instead of only during the warmest months, taxing day-trippers and capping their numbers, issuing a limited number of time-specific tickets for popular attractions, and putting restrictions on Airbnb rentals are being tested at various overtouristed locations.

As it stands, the cruise ship industry does have negative impacts on some of it's local economies. That is to say, in some places it has almost no economic impact at all, in others, they live off of the Cruise Tourism. Relatively speaking, cruise ship passengers contribute very little to the communities where they disembark for day trips. A 2019 STUDY of Maine's cruise industry estimated that cruise ship passengers spent just $62 on average per day meaning that even though local people receive little-to-no benefit from cruise ship tourism, they still bear the burdens of congestion, overcrowding, and pollution they bring. But beginning to address this problem could be as simple as reorganizing the itineraries of day-tripping passengers to include more obscure neighborhoods and attractions. The wider participation of local tour guides, restaurants, shops, and other vendors in day trips could help to REDISTRIBUTE cruising wealth to larger segments of the population.