CLIA has announced a 10-point Cruise Passenger Bill of Rights that was unanimously endorsed by all members. CLIA President Christine Duffy said it goes beyond a similar six-point plan suggested by Sen. Charles Schumer in March. Cruise editor Tom Stieghorst spoke with Duffy about the initiative.
Q: What does this accomplish?
A: I think the primary thing it accomplishes is that it demonstrates the commitment of our cruise line members, who unanimously supported this, to be very transparent and very clear about what passenger rights are in the rare event of a mechanical failure or power failure. It brings transparency, accountability -- because there's teeth in this -- and consistency.
Q: You say there's teeth in this. What in your view constitute the teeth?
A: Well, now that these are passenger rights, it does create a contractual promise between the cruise lines and the passengers around these rights.
Q: Does this then open the door for the cruise line, and potentially agents, to be sued for not honoring the rights?
A: These are enforceable rights, so like any other contractual commitment that we have, we take those seriously.
Q: Did you examine the issue of whether this might generate lawsuits?
A: We certainly had legal counsel involved in how these were developed, and I think our members understand, and their legal counsels understand, what the implications are to these rights.
Q: How were the 10 rights decided? Was there any input from consumer advocates, passengers or travel agents?
A: It was Sen. Schumer who proposed that the industry consider adopting a voluntary passenger bill of rights. These 10 rights represent the six specific points Sen. Schumer had called upon the industry to consider. We started with his list and then added four additional things.
Q: Did you get Sen. Schumer's input, or notify him about this?
A: We have notified him and supplied some additional information [his office] had requested. We sent them the press release in advance of our releasing it [on May 22].
Q: If the Cruise Passenger Bill of Rights had been in place at the time of the Carnival Triumph incident, do you think that Carnival would have been in violation of it?
A: No, I think that Carnival in some cases went above and beyond what these rights would require them to do. These rights are certainly the minimum requirement. A cruise line can determine they want to go above and beyond based on the circumstances or situation. In the case of Carnival, I believe that in terms of how they handled passengers and what was provided, actually exceed some of what's here.
Q: In which countries are the passenger rights already in effect? Why not in every country?
A: It is effective immediately for passengers who purchase their cruise in North America. It's really a logical problem, given that we were really focused on getting this out quickly. We need a little bit more time to take the rights as they have been approved by our board and get them translated into 14 languages, so that the translations are all consistent, and then make sure we allow time to communicate and work with our sister associations around the world and their members that may not be part of the CLIA North America brand. The intent is that this will be a condition of membership for all CLIA member cruise lines around the world.
Follow Tom Stieghorst on Twitter @tstravelweekly.