Of all the calamities that befell tourists as the coronavirus took hold, those involving cruise ships stood apart. Contagion at sea inspired a special horror, as pleasure palaces turned into prison hulks, and rumours of infection on board spread between fetid cabins via WhatsApp. Trapped in close proximity to their fellow passengers, holidaymakers experienced the distress of being both victims and agents of infection, as a succession of ports refused them entry.
When it began, the deadly situation at sea was seen as a freakish outgrowth of what many still thought of as a Chinese problem. The first ship to suffer a major outbreak was the Diamond Princess. By mid-February, 355 cases had been confirmed aboard, and the ship was held being in quarantine in the port of Yokohama. At the time, the ship accounted for more than half of reported cases outside China. Fourteen passengers on the Diamond Princess would die of the virus.
The nightmare at sea has not concluded. Even after passengers from more than 30 afflicted cruise ships were allowed to disembark, and flooded into hospitals, quarantine hotels or on to charter flights home, an estimated 100,000 crew and staff remained trapped at sea, some in quarantine, others blocked from disembarking until their employers could make onward travel arrangements. This second drama led to a mass hunger strike – by 15 Romanian crew in limbo off the coast of Florida – and a police intervention to quell disturbances on a ship quarantined in the German port of Cuxhaven. As recently as 1 June, crew and staff aboard 20-odd cruise ships marooned in Manila Bay were reportedly clamouring to be allowed ashore.
Cruises have become a symbol of the ravages that coronavirus has inflicted on tourism. A sector that until January was worth $150bn, by its own estimate, is shedding jobs, issuing debt and discounting furiously simply to survive. But even before the current crisis hit, cruising had become symptomatic of the damage that tourism wreaks on the world.
Tourism is an unusual industry in that the assets it monetises – a view, a reef, a cathedral – do not belong to it. The world’s dominant cruise companies – Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian – pay little towards the upkeep of the public goods they live off. By incorporating themselves in overseas tax havens with benign environmental and labour laws – respectively Panama, Liberia and Bermuda – cruising’s big three, which account for three-quarters of the industry, get to enjoy low taxes and avoid much irksome regulation, while polluting the air and sea, eroding coastlines and pouring tens of millions of people into picturesque ports of call that often cannot cope with them.
What goes for cruises goes for most of the travel industry. For decades, a small number of environmentally minded reformists in the sector have tried to develop sustainable tourism that creates enduring employment while minimising the damage it does. But most hotel groups, tour operators and national tourism authorities – whatever their stated commitment to sustainable tourism – continue to prioritise the economies of scale that inevitably lead to more tourists paying less money and heaping more pressure on those same assets. Before the pandemic, industry experts were forecasting that international arrivals would rise by between 3% and 4% in 2020. Chinese travellers, the largest and fastest-growing cohort in world tourism, were expected to make 160m trips abroad, a 27% increase on the 2015 figure.
The virus has given us a picture, at once frightening and beautiful, of a world without tourism. We see now what happens to our public goods when tourists aren’t clustering to exploit them. Shorelines enjoy a respite from the erosion caused by cruise ships the size of canyons. Walkers stuck at home cannot litter mountainsides. Intricate culinary cultures are no longer menaced by triangles of defrosted pizza. It is hard to imagine a better illustration of tourism’s effects than our current holiday away from it.
Coronavirus has also revealed the danger of overreliance on tourism, demonstrating in brutal fashion what happens when the industry supporting an entire community, at the expense of any other more sustainable activity, collapses. On 7 May, the UN World Tourism Organisation estimated that earnings from international tourism might be down 80% this year against last year’s figure of $1.7tn, and that 120m jobs could be lost. Since tourism relies on the same human mobility that spreads disease, and will be subject to the most stringent and lasting restrictions, it is likely to suffer more than almost any other economic activity.
by Christopher de Bellaigue, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Venice, 2019. Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty
When it began, the deadly situation at sea was seen as a freakish outgrowth of what many still thought of as a Chinese problem. The first ship to suffer a major outbreak was the Diamond Princess. By mid-February, 355 cases had been confirmed aboard, and the ship was held being in quarantine in the port of Yokohama. At the time, the ship accounted for more than half of reported cases outside China. Fourteen passengers on the Diamond Princess would die of the virus.
The nightmare at sea has not concluded. Even after passengers from more than 30 afflicted cruise ships were allowed to disembark, and flooded into hospitals, quarantine hotels or on to charter flights home, an estimated 100,000 crew and staff remained trapped at sea, some in quarantine, others blocked from disembarking until their employers could make onward travel arrangements. This second drama led to a mass hunger strike – by 15 Romanian crew in limbo off the coast of Florida – and a police intervention to quell disturbances on a ship quarantined in the German port of Cuxhaven. As recently as 1 June, crew and staff aboard 20-odd cruise ships marooned in Manila Bay were reportedly clamouring to be allowed ashore.Cruises have become a symbol of the ravages that coronavirus has inflicted on tourism. A sector that until January was worth $150bn, by its own estimate, is shedding jobs, issuing debt and discounting furiously simply to survive. But even before the current crisis hit, cruising had become symptomatic of the damage that tourism wreaks on the world.
Tourism is an unusual industry in that the assets it monetises – a view, a reef, a cathedral – do not belong to it. The world’s dominant cruise companies – Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian – pay little towards the upkeep of the public goods they live off. By incorporating themselves in overseas tax havens with benign environmental and labour laws – respectively Panama, Liberia and Bermuda – cruising’s big three, which account for three-quarters of the industry, get to enjoy low taxes and avoid much irksome regulation, while polluting the air and sea, eroding coastlines and pouring tens of millions of people into picturesque ports of call that often cannot cope with them.
What goes for cruises goes for most of the travel industry. For decades, a small number of environmentally minded reformists in the sector have tried to develop sustainable tourism that creates enduring employment while minimising the damage it does. But most hotel groups, tour operators and national tourism authorities – whatever their stated commitment to sustainable tourism – continue to prioritise the economies of scale that inevitably lead to more tourists paying less money and heaping more pressure on those same assets. Before the pandemic, industry experts were forecasting that international arrivals would rise by between 3% and 4% in 2020. Chinese travellers, the largest and fastest-growing cohort in world tourism, were expected to make 160m trips abroad, a 27% increase on the 2015 figure.
The virus has given us a picture, at once frightening and beautiful, of a world without tourism. We see now what happens to our public goods when tourists aren’t clustering to exploit them. Shorelines enjoy a respite from the erosion caused by cruise ships the size of canyons. Walkers stuck at home cannot litter mountainsides. Intricate culinary cultures are no longer menaced by triangles of defrosted pizza. It is hard to imagine a better illustration of tourism’s effects than our current holiday away from it.
Coronavirus has also revealed the danger of overreliance on tourism, demonstrating in brutal fashion what happens when the industry supporting an entire community, at the expense of any other more sustainable activity, collapses. On 7 May, the UN World Tourism Organisation estimated that earnings from international tourism might be down 80% this year against last year’s figure of $1.7tn, and that 120m jobs could be lost. Since tourism relies on the same human mobility that spreads disease, and will be subject to the most stringent and lasting restrictions, it is likely to suffer more than almost any other economic activity.
by Christopher de Bellaigue, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Venice, 2019. Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty
