With more young cruisers, Royal Caribbean adds lifeguards

Cruise lines are slowly starting to hire lifeguards to
supervise swimming pools as the industry’s ships get bigger, with more water
features, and the number of children onboard continues to grow.

The latest line to announce it would hire pool guards was
Royal Caribbean International, which started the service on the Oasis of the
Seas in late February and plans to have it in place fleetwide by the end of
June.

Disney Cruise Line also employs lifeguards, and last year
Carnival Corp.’s Princess Cruises added them to ships serving the Chinese
market.

Richard Fain, chairman of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., said
the change represents an evolution in the company’s thinking rather than a
reaction to any one event or trend. “It’s part of a process of continual
improvement,” Fain said at a groundbreaking ceremony last week for Royal
Caribbean’s new terminal at PortMiami.

The lifeguards will wear distinctive red-and-white uniforms,
and lifeguarding will be their sole duty, Royal Caribbean said.

They are part of a larger water-safety awareness program
that includes swim vests for kids 4 to 12 years old, a water-safety
presentation in the Adventure Ocean kids program and a teen 411 session.

All the lifeguards have been trained and certified by
StarGuard Elite, a provider of aquatic risk-prevention programs, primarily for
waterparks and other hospitality venues that operate water features.

The move by Royal Caribbean is a major shift from the policy
prevalent until recently in the cruise industry whose primary water safety
measure until now has been to post shipboard warnings about the risks of using
the pool.

“It’s about time,” said Alison Osinski,
principal-owner of Aquatic Consulting Services in Avalon, Calif.

Osinski said the land resorts that cruise lines consider
competition, such as casino hotels in Las Vegas and theme park hotels in
Orlando, all have guarded pools, and consumers have come to expect that.

She also said that the nature of cruising has changed over
the years as marketing has shifted to target more families.

“It’s a combination of things going on here,”
Osinski said. “But I think the big one is that there are so many more
children on cruise lines, and the type of facilities and amenities they’re
offering has really changed.”

On the Harmony of the Seas, Royal Caribbean’s latest ship,
the water features include three main pools, three waterslides, two Flowriders,
the Splashaway Bay children’s waterpark, the adults-only Solarium and the
AquaTheater, as well as several large heated whirlpools.

“If you look at really old cruise ships what did you
see?” Osinski said “A single pool, maybe a spa or something. Today
these are aquatic facilities being built on some of these ships, and the whole
emphasis on families is something different. You didn’t used to have families
with little kids going on cruises.”

Fain confirmed that Royal Caribbean is carrying a greater
percentage of children than ever.

“There’s definitely more children,” he said. “The
family market has been a burgeoning one.” In addition, he said,
multigenerational travel has taken off, sometimes pairing children with
grandparents for supervision.

Royal Caribbean’s move comes after a half-dozen drownings on
cruise ships in the past few years, including an 8-year-old on the Anthem of
the Seas last July.

One argument put forth by some cruise executives for not
having lifeguards is that it lulls parents into a false sense of security and
removes them from feeling responsible for pool safety.

Osinski said that while parents should watch their kids,
they often don’t, and parents are not as well equipped as lifeguards to
recognize drowning or to effectively rescue kids if they are in distress.

She said hospitality companies can’t have it both ways,
encouraging parents to relax but also holding them solely responsible for pool
safety.

“You can’t have them sitting in lounge chairs,”
Osinski said. “That’s not what somebody who supervises does. [When] you’ve
got preschoolers in a pool you should be an arm’s length away with your eyes on
them, not lying in a lounge chair reading a book and drinking margaritas.”