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The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on the sustainability reports published by the two market leaders in ocean cruising industry.

The paper begins with short reviews of the growing interest in the commitment to corporate sustainability and of the growth and market structure of the ocean cruising industry by way of setting the context for the commentary. This commentary is based on a review of the most recent sustainability reports published by the two leading ocean cruising companies which account for almost 75 per cent of total industry revenues.

The findings of the paper reveal that the two major ocean cruising companies, namely, Carnival Corporation and Royal Caribbean Cruises, published extensive sustainability reports covering a wide range of environmental, social, economic and governance issues. The other leading ocean cruising companies posted limited information on their approach to sustainability on their corporate websites and some posted no information on sustainability. However, the authors suggest that given that the two major cruising companies account for 70 per cent of ocean cruising passengers, the industry compares favourably in its sustainability reporting with other players in the hospitality industry and the service sector. That said, the authors also suggest that approaches to sustainability within the cruising industry, which are based on continuing growth, present testing management challenges for the leading cruising companies.

The paper provides an accessible commentary on current approaches to sustainability in the ocean cruising industry, and as such, it will interest professionals working in the cruise industry and more generally in the hospitality industry as well as academics and students interested in hospitality management and sustainability.

In the USA, the cruise industry has generated more than $42bn in total economic activities, involving over 356,000 jobs. The largest and most aggressive operator is acknowledged as Carnival Cruise Line (CCL), with a 48.3 per cent market share including all subsidiary companies in 2013. CCL has had a strong track record of reliability and high quality; however, within the past decade, there have been several deviations from standard daily procedure that have altered the way CCL does business. When trying to interpret changes in company performance, it is important to include other factors that may have contributed to changes at the time of any given deviation.

The authors use time series empirical mode decomposition to visualize whether there are short- or long-term shocks to company performance in the wake of deviating events. Besides, a thorough analysis is carried out with multivariable linear regression to identify the factors that really impact CCL’s performance.

This case study shows the seasonal patterns of weather issues with the largest number of hurricanes and tropical storms taking place during the third quarter of each year.

Empirical results will enhance understanding of the industry with regard to such events. It will provide shareholders information and opinions to enhance their decision-making processes.

The cruise sector's workforce is highly diverse in terms of nationalities, age, and gender. However, diversity in the workforce does not guarantee business success.

Decades of research on the effects of diversity indicate that it can negatively or positively affect an organization's performance. A more diverse workforce does not automatically perform better financially, feels more committed to their companies, nor experiences higher levels of satisfaction. Indeed, data suggest diversity may produce more conflict, employee turnover, but if well managed can lead to greater creativity and innovation.

This chapter explores the cruise industry's diversity and inclusion challenges and management practices. To examine what cruise companies are doing in this field, we reviewed the public data of the four largest cruise companies. We analyzed how these companies define diversity, their commitment to inclusion, their practices, their metrics, and their primary objectives.

Firstly, there is no theoretical model that includes all variables that affect the management of diversity in the cruise sector. Secondly, companies communicate a commitment to inclusion in their corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports and refer to similar policies implemented by the hospitality industry. Thirdly, the main challenges are the multicultural environment and the limited female representation.

The major limitation of this study is the data source. We recommend further studies supported by nonpublic company data. We encourage cruise industry leaders to support the research to develop an empirically tested model that captures the specific variables that affect diversity management in the industry.

The purpose of this paper is to recount the history of the marketing of the maritime passenger industry (known today as the cruise industry). This is a unique industry that has survived and thrived for almost 175 years despite dramatic environmental changes. This history focuses on passenger shipping in and out of the USA first from/to European ports, later focusing on cruises from the USA to the Caribbean, today’s most popular cruise destination.

This study adapts the Hollander et al. (2005) approach and incorporates primary data such as fare lists, advertisements and promotional materials, as well as secondary data from a variety of expert works and government reports.

This study finds that the industry’s marketing history can be divided into six periods or phases: immigration and luxury (mid-nineteenth century to 1914); World War I (1914-1918); tourism, alcohol and luxury (1918-1939); World War II (1939-1946); jet age emergence (1946-1970); and cruising for all (1970 to the present day). Continuing industry growth; increasing focus on new geographic, and every-smaller demographic and psychographic markets; promotional emphasis on cuisine and activities; and positioning as a mass-consumed luxury are trends for the future.

Space constraints limit the information mostly to Europe-to-North America sailings of British and German transatlantic lines early in the paper, and to USA-to-Caribbean cruises in later phases.

This study illustrates how an industry can completely reinvent all elements of its marketing strategy in response to changing social and technological forces. It adds to a growing body of industry marketing histories.

Although much has been written about maritime history, no known work has examined the history of the marketing of the maritime passenger industry. It augments the growing body of industry-specific marketing histories.

This case study has been developed to facilitate discussion about current supply chain management issues and potential solutions. The scenario presented in this case is very representative of the pressures experienced by supply chain managers. Namely, the need to reduce costs while maintaining quality and customer service. This case presents some unusual challenges and constraints that are unique to the cruise line industry. These constraints can provide an opportunity to explore new supply chain paradigms.

The cruise sector promotes itself as a responsible steward of the ocean environment and claims its policies and practices protect the marine ecology. As such, it would argue that its activities do not significantly contribute to global warming and climate change. However, there is disconnect between what the cruise sector says it does and what cruiseships actually do in relation to the environment. This chapter looks at the sector's environmental practices and how it contributes to climate change. This is both directly through greenhouse gases and indirectly through degradation of the marine environment, as well as the prospects for the sector to voluntarily take responsibility for its part of the problem. Despite a poor record on voluntary efforts, the chapter calls on the cruise sector to embrace initiatives that bring its behavior in line with its public pronouncements about environmental responsibility.

This paper aims to conduct a review on cruise shipping and the cruise shipping industry. The current trends are analyzed for the industry, showing that this industry is still young and has great potential to boom. Meanwhile, the Asia market is the fastest growth region among the global, to which increasing cruise ships are repositioned by major cruise lines. However, for such a promising industry, the literature review on some state-of-the-art research works suggests that the research works that have been conducted for the cruise shipping are quite limited, and the majority of the works belongs to empirical and descriptive studies, which does not provide optimization-based quantitative analysis on some operation planning problems.

This paper conducts a review on cruise shipping and the cruise shipping industry.

In reality, there are some important operation planning problems faced by cruise lines or cruise ships, and four of them are addressed in this paper in response to the fast growing trend. The addressed operation planning problems are cruise fleet management, cruise ship deployment, cruise itinerary design and cruise service planning.

The importance and the attention for the research on the problems are also elaborated in the paper.

The cruise industry has been significantly impacted as a result of Covid-19. Some cruise lines have downsized, and many have cancelled ship orders while some vessels have been put on retainers. It is still uncertain how long this situation will continue. Even when cruise lines resume their services, the uptake is likely to be gradual because many traditional and potential cruisers may still be reluctant to travel because of the fear of contracting the disease. In addition, an enormous amount of money and time will be required to overhaul ships, re-plan service processes, re-certify crew and develop a new normal for how cruise businesses operate. An analysis of these issues forms the primary purpose of this study.

A qualitative approach was used to gather data and this was augmented by the personal industry experiences of the authors.

Steady growth in the cruise industry came to an end during the last two years due to the unanticipated impact of the pandemic. SARS, Ebola and other diseases were much less significant in comparison. Many Caribbean islands have recently upgraded their ports to accommodate mega cruise ships as tourism is the main source of income for these islands. These investments run to millions of US dollars and as yet, there are no indications as to when the industry will recover.

Access to industry experts was not as broad-ranging as anticipated due to time pressures and the fact that it is difficult to schedule interviews by telephone or webinar with busy practitioners.

The pandemic will continue to impact the people of the Caribbean economically and socially, because of their dependence on tourism and especially cruise businesses.

The gradual re-entry of cruise operations represents a fourth phase in the development of the industry. This juncture is the most critical phase because of the many opinions surrounding vaccination. Cruising is unlike land-based tourism assets where a rapid reactive response is easier to facilitate. A health crisis at sea can have disastrous consequences, especially for small islands with limited facilities to deal with critical Covid-19 infections.

Can sustainability disclosures be a tool for executing image restoration strategies after corporate manslaughter? This is the question explored in this study of Costa Crociere's sustainability reports after the Concordia disaster.

Merging traditional textual content analysis with visual analysis and supported by machine learning tools, this is a predominantly qualitative study framed by legitimacy theory, image restoration theory and impression management.

Costa Crociere's voluntary sustainability reporting is strongly influenced by a mix of text and visual signals that distract readers' attention from the disaster. A “nothing really happened” communication strategy pervades the disclosures, with the only rational motivation being to change perceptions and erase memories of this tragic and avoidable event.

Although the analysis covered multiple sources of corporate information, media coverage was not one of them. A more in-depth exploration of sustainability reporting in the cruise industry, including evidence of similar cases, to test impression management theory would be a worthwhile avenue for future research.

While Costa Crociere technically followed the customary guidelines of disclosing human resource impacts, there was almost no acknowledgement of the people involved in the accident. Costa Concierevastly understated their responsibility for the accident, did not apologize, and conveyed very little remorse. The majority of disclosures centred on disaster recovery management.

The authors discuss why and how a company can overcome a legitimacy threat by completely freezing its voluntary sustainability reporting, and the authors show how a company can restore its image by minimizing specific aspects of an accident and shifting attention from the human victims to corporate operations. Incorporating image recognition driven by AI models and combining the results with narrative disclosures contributes an innovative and original analysis technique to the field of impression management. In addition, this research also contributes to our knowledge on the cruise industry – a sector currently under scrutiny for its ethical, social and environmental practices.

Cruise tourism is a dynamic, growing segment of tourism that has long ceased to represent a mere niche and is slowly but steadily entering the domain of mainstream tourism. Yet, cruise tourism represents a minor fraction of tourism-related literature and research (Papathanassis and Beckmann, 2011). This study aims to examine the main trends and state-of-the-art developments in cruise tourism. The intension is to provide a starting point, a basis for non-specialists in this area, for further interdisciplinary research.

Using the author’s previous research and expertise over the past decade, this paper aims at providing a concise overview of the key perspectives and concepts in cruise tourism, whilst highlighting the current and future challenges faced by the sector and its stakeholders.

In this context, the potential of information and communication technologies for cruise tourism development and research (e-cruising) is underlined.

Finally, this paper offers a comprehensive systemic definition of cruise tourism and the corresponding Cruise Entities, inter-Relationships and Themes (CruisERT) framework, highlighting relevant areas and questions for further research.