Peoples' perceptions on cruise liner disasters

Abstract

The cruise industry has been recently hit by a big stumbling block, which led to a lot of consequences both on the cruise industry itself as well as taking the lives away of passengers. In this research the perceptions of people on such disasters like the most recent one of Costa Concordia were studied to see whether these incidents would have an effect at all on shaping perceptions. The perceptions were studied through questionnaires distributed as well as being able to gather more information about what people think on the industry as a whole. The study also looks at how the industry reacted to this disaster and what was the aftermath. Throughout this research one will be able to see that these disasters have little to no effect on peoples' perception on cruising, especially since these disasters are not the norm of the day. Health and safety issues were triggered when such a disaster happened however, through amended regulations cruising became safer than ever before. When choosing a cruise people look for other things as well when going on a cruise holiday being itinerary and quality of service provided. As time passes by, the trend is that these ships are getting bigger and bigger in size, augmenting the possibility that should a disaster happen, it will have larger consequences on the industry and the most important on the passengers of the ship involved.