Cruise industry faces new scrutiny after Costa Concordia disaster

We saw it with our own eyes, and still it was hard to believe — this huge, modern ship, owned by the world’s most successful cruise company, lying on its side.

You see shipwrecks in movies, or pirate-themed shows outside Treasure Island in Vegas.

I’m sure that, like me, you never imagined you’d see a scene from “Titanic” played out in the tranquil blue waters off the coast of Italy.

I mean, the Titanic sunk a century ago (it’ll be 100 years on April 15). With all of our experience, technology and maritime laws, I assumed today’s cruisers wouldn’t need to worry about safety.

Now we know shipwrecks still happen. Costa Concordia’s recent grounding has rocked our complacency. We wonder: Is it safe to take a cruise?

People in the cruise industry — cruise lines and travel agents both — started bracing for a drop in business as a result of the incident.

And the timing would make it even worse, since this is prime booking time for those planning to take a cruise this summer.

“This is a PR nightmare for the Costa brand,” Jaime Katz, an analyst with investment research company Morningstar, told Reuters.

But local travel agents say the incident has barely caused a ripple in their business.

“Naturally, people are talking about it, but no one has canceled,” said Rick Ardis of Ardis Travel in East Rutherford. “Experienced cruisers seem to know that it was an unusual event.” It may have made some “non-cruisers” put off plans to take their first cruise, but “most repeaters will probably shrug it off, but be more alert to the safety information and drill.”

Ludy Hernandez, product development director for cruises at Club ABC Tours in Bloomfield, said in the 20 years she’s been with the club — and working on cruise ships before that — she can’t remember an accident on this scale. So “when I saw the news, I thought, ‘Oh my God,’ ” she recalled, and worried about cruise sales. Instead, “just the opposite has happened.” The same weekend images of the shipwreck were being televised, cruise bookings were above average, she said.

Club ABC, one of the largest travel clubs in the world, offers tour and cruise packages — several on Costa — to its members. Two clients booked on a future cruise called, but not to cancel. “They just had questions about the situation,” Hernandez said, adding that Club ABC has no plans to drop Costa from its offerings.

Travel Research Online, a website targeting travel agents, last week published “When a Ship Sinks,” a blog post offering three tips to help agents deal with clients’ safety concerns. Tip 1?

“Do NOT ensure their safety. The first question a client will ask is, ‘Am I safe on a cruise ship?’ Do NOT go into a sales pitch about how safe cruise ships are; one just sank. The Concordia was built in 2006, so she has all of the modern safety features of other ships. Accidents can happen, but as an agent, if you tell a client they will be safe, you may be opening yourself up to liability.”

The “sales pitch” is, of course, true, and it was reiterated in a statement by the Cruise Lines International Association shortly after the Concordia incident. About 16 million people took a cruise last year, says CLIA, which represents 26 major cruise lines. “Accidents such as this one are an extremely rare occurrence in the cruise industry, and cruising continues to be one of the safest means of travel among all types of vacationing.” They don’t offer any statistics on how many accidents there actually are — numbers the general public will be hard pressed to find, by the way.

It’s the same reminder we get from airlines after a plane accident — although airline spokespeople usually include an example of how much safer flying is compared with X or Y form of transportation.

Still, when major accidents occur they’re all over the news, in large part because cruise ships carry so many people.

Unfortunately, such accidents may be the only way cruise safety issues — some of them long-standing — ever receive attention.

As I was making a list of issues brought up by the Concordia incident, Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) said the accident shows the need for more industry regulation. Matsui, who sponsored legislation passed by Congress last year to improve the safety of passengers against shipboard crime, said it was a first step to rein in a “highly unregulated cruise line industry.”

I’m with her, especially considering the trend of bigger and bigger ships carrying more passengers than the population of some small towns. The gross tonnage of ships has doubled in the last decade, and the average passenger capacity on a ship is 2,700 — with Royal Caribbean International’s Allure of the Seas able to carry 6,360 passengers.

Here are some of the holes in the safety net.