A Must Read for Cruise Lovers

[jdymiller]

Just came across Garin's book "The Devils on the Deep Blue Sea," which is on close out on Amazon for $6. It really opened my eyes to what goes on behind the scenes on the cruise ships and detailed the rivalry between RCCL an Carnival. Reads like fiction and should be in every cruisers library.

[tom_uk]

.. is "Selling the Sea" (or "$elling the $ea" as the book cover has it) by Bob Dickinson and Andy Vladimir. Labelled 'An inside look at the cruise industry', it's an account of the different lines' marketing & product development strategies, their pricing policies, and so on, so it's more of a business text on 'how to run a cruise line'. (Actually, more like 'here's how the companies run their cruise lines'.) Bob Dickinson was until very recently President & CEO of Carnival Cruise Line; Andy Vladimir is a` professor of marketing & business at a relevant university in Florida.

 

This book has just been re-issued in a second edition (my copy is actually copyrighted 2008!). The first edition is about 10 or 11 years old, so make sure you pick up the right one - the first edition would be rather out of date.

[Cruise Arizona]

I read it a few years ago when I came across it in our public library.

 

One thing I found interesting is that many of the things that used to happen "under the table" are now revenue sources for the cruise lines.

 

The one example was that the book said that many of the jewelry stores and shops in the cruise ports paid the cruise directors so that they would recommend them to passengers. Now the stores pay a fee to the "Shopping" company so that they can listed as recommended stores.

 

I'm trying to remember other examples... but that is the only one that stands out in my memory.

 

The whole "Sign and Sail' card thing came about as a result of employees skimming, so to keep their profits up they turned it into a cashless environment.

 

Some of the stories also seemed to be "hearsay" and may or may not actually be true, but overall I did find it to be a very interesting read, especially if you used to cruise in the 70's and 80's.