Original subtitles

Beautiful weather, stunning locations,

the stuff luxury dreams are made of.

Welcome to the world of the cruise.

The ship really becomes the destination

and you don't want to get off.

For many, it's been the holiday of a lifetime.

You just wake up, look out of the window and say, wow.

But for how much longer?

The pandemic has hit travel and tourism harder than most.

It's been a train wreck.

It literally turned the taps off and the cruise ships are

literally having to cancel cruises, send people back home.

And cruise companies are struggling to weather the storm.

Royal Caribbean, Carnival and Norwegian are haemorrhaging

a billion dollars a month.

Their mega ships sit idle, waiting for the green light to sail again.

I haven't gone this long without a cruise for 20, 30 years.

So I'm delving into this multibillion pound industry.

The company itself knows that it can basically exploit

the little guy.

I'll discover how cruise operators have sailed through a barrage

of criticisms and disasters.

I had friends on board.

Very sad, shocking.

Meet the people that have shaped the way we cruise.

This was a mind-blowing project to get involved in.

And find out if there is a future for cruising

after Covid crippled the industry.

Is there a chance that the cruise industry could go bust entirely?

I must admit there were times when I thought that.

When cruises began, they were the ultimate luxury holiday,

the preserve of the wealthy.

Since then, cruise lines have broadened their appeal, selling

luxury cruises that cater for all budget types and age groups.

And last year, over 300 ships were cruising around the world,

making this one of the biggest tourism success stories of our time.

I've actually been on somewhere in the region of 85 cruises.

I lost count a while ago. I am that cruise addict.

As of now, I've been to 34 countries and 22 of them

have been from cruising.

There's something about being on a ship.

It is a bit romantic.

I mean, forget the fact that I've married two husbands

from cruise ships, but it is a romantic situation.

Each morning you wake up, you've got a different vista, a different port.

You're not having to pack and unpack, and you just wake up,

look out of the window and say, wow.

Last year, two million Brits contributed

to a total of 30 million cruise passengers travelling the world.

Before the pandemic,

the cruise industry was worth over £100 billion.

Huge floating resorts were continually skirting the globe.

From Alaska to Antarctica, the Med to Mexico,

it was the sort of holiday that cruise converts

kept coming back to.

But how a luxury trip on a ship became a treat that many of us

could aspire to is an incredible story of engineering and marketing.

The success of the cruise industry was born from the brilliant insight

that the ship itself could be the destination

rather than just the journey.

A veteran of more than 200 cruises over the last 50 years,

maritime historian Roger Cartwright's

knowledge of cruising is encyclopaedic.

So, Roger, tell me about the beginning of

the modern cruise industry.

In the late 1960s,

a Norwegian called Knut Kloster built a small ship

that had entertainment spaces on them.

They served good food and they ran seven-day cruises

out of ports like Miami,

and from that little acorn, a huge industry grew.

That was the start of Carnival

and it was the start of Norwegian Cruise Line.

Drawing on the first class experience offered by

ocean liners like the QE2, cruise ships became a playground

for an older, wealthier set.

But the appeal of invitations to dine on the captain's table

and play shuffleboard on deck was soon dated,

and the luxury cruise struggled with an image problem.

Cruising tended to be a bit stuffy.

You would get dressed for dinner every night

when you weren't in port.

Entertainment was quite basic.

To make matters worse, in the UK it was now competing with the rise

of affordable air travel and cheap package holidays.

The idea of a pleasure cruise had lost its appeal and its saviour

came from an unlikely place.

# The Love Boat. #

The Love Boat was a seminal American TV series that travelled the globe.

Shown in almost 100 countries, it revolutionised

how people saw cruises, sparking a spectacular boom.

The dramatic storylines and big hair emphasised the glamour

and romance of cruising.

It was the perfect advertisement for the cruise industry.

It didn't cost them a penny, but led to billions in revenue.

And rumour has it, that staff on board even grew moustaches

like Isaac, the bartender, to increase their tips.

Really, it said to ordinary people, "This is a holiday for you...

"..and it is fun."

I did watch The Love Boat, yes, I was addicted to it.

It was all fun... Sand, sea and sex, dare I say it?

It just gave a whole different aspect to cruising.

It was eye opening.

You know, every day they used to go to bed and then get up

in another place.

And I just thought, "Wow!" It really made me think

that that was what I wanted for my future, to be on a cruise ship.

With the help of The Love Boat, by 1980, passenger numbers

had tripled to nearly 1.5 million a year.

But even though its popularity was increasing, it was still

an expensive holiday.

Cruise operators knew that to expand, they would need to make

that holiday more affordable beyond the very rich.

And so the mega ship was born.

In 1988, Royal Caribbean commissioned the largest

cruise ship ever built at that time.

It was called Sovereign of the Seas.

She was a floating resort.

I think I once heard it described as a horizontal Hilton.

It took five years to design and build and cost

175 million US dollars.

Stuart Phillips was part of the design team that created

the extravagant interior spaces that would become the future

of the cruise system.

So, Stuart, could you tell me what your brief was

for the Sovereign of the Seas?

Well, they were after a five-star, glamorous,

luxury hotel at sea.

How did you create that five-star opulence?

We used marble and all sorts of high-quality materials

in the shopping mall.

The champagne bar is an Art Deco theme,

etched glass designs on the windows.

Leather seats, very, very high, high class.

What you would expect in a luxury hotel.

Did you feel that you were part of the beginning

of something extraordinary?

This was a mind-blowing project to get involved in.

Now everybody talks with such reverence about Sovereign

as the first great mega ship.

To capitalise on the success of Sovereign,

two even larger sister ships were launched.

Royal Caribbean had found the blueprint

for the future of cruising.

The success of the first mega ships sparked a kind of space race

between the cruise companies.

The more popular cruising became,

the more possibility the operators saw for expanding even further.

As a world-leading cruise industry analyst, Tony Peisley, understands

exactly how the cruise operators were able to sell luxury

to the masses.

And it all comes down to economies of scale.

If you've got one ship, 2,000 passengers...

..one ship, 4,000 passengers,

you've still only got one captain, one head of department,

one chief engineer, propulsion doesn't cost twice as much

for a bigger ship than a ship half the size.

So automatically, you're cutting your costs.

And it worked.

By the 1990s, an astonishing 3.8 million people

were holidaying on cruise ships.

The industry was booming.

Cruise companies needed more ships to keep up with demand.

In just ten years, the number of ships on order had tripled.

They were built with more pools, more bars and more restaurants.

Jim Evans has been responsible for buying, refitting

and launching these giants of the seas.

Jim, can you tell me, how are cruise ships built?

These days, they're assembled piece by piece inside a big dry dock,

which is often inside an enormous hangar,

bigger than an aeroplane hangar.

And has it got quicker over time to build ships?

Very much so.

The old QE2, built in the 1960s, took about three and a half years.

She was 70,000 tonnes.

Some of these monsters we're building now, 200,000 tonnes,

take 18 months, two years at maximum.

Move over Sovereign of the Seas.

This is the world's largest cruise ship today,

Symphony of the Seas.

With 16 passenger decks, 22 restaurants,

four pools, an ice rink and a water park,

this modern mega ship makes the size and cost of Sovereign

look like it was built on a budget.

Symphony cost almost £1 billion to build,

which means that just one berth comes in

at a cost price of £150,000.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

There's $60 billion worth of ships on order

over the next seven years.

The mind boggles at how cruise lines finance just one

of these billion-pound vessels.

How long does it take to recoup that money?

In the recent good times, it's probably taken five or six years.

Wow! I'm really surprised by that.

How long will a ship be in service for?

Typically about 40 years.

And you assume it's a ship with about 3,000 passengers.

That's about 26 million profit in a year.

To put that in perspective, before the pandemic, the cruise

sector was the fastest-growing area of the travel industry, at almost

twice the rate of land-based tourism.

Coming up, we take a look at how cruise ships found ways to entice

more passengers on board than ever before.

I think because it's now become such good value for money,

it's almost a resort holiday now.

And how they squeeze our wallets.

On board excursions, speciality restaurants...

..photography, the spas, they will try and get

money out of you in many ways.

In the early 1970s, cruising was a neat holiday

for the wealthy elite.

A handful of purpose-built cruise ships, often well-to-do passengers,

activities like shuffleboard, masquerade balls

and bridge tournaments.

Since then, the ships have quadrupled in size and number,

and the industry is now worth over £100 billion.

At the beginning of this year,

there were around 300 cruise ships touring the globe.

And thanks to economies of scale,

the modern mega ships have made cruising affordable,

broadening the appeal of a luxury cruise to all kinds of people.

Even on one ship, you would have people like...

..well, like us, really -

working in a call centre and having, you know, basic jobs,

to multiple millionaires -

and we all mix in together, having a laugh together.

When we started cruising, most people were cruising to be cruising,

but I think, because it's now become such good value for money,

it's almost a resort holiday now.

There's now a cruise for every budget and taste -

single cruises, couples' cruises, adventure cruises,

even ballroom dance cruises.

Taking inspiration from resorts on land,

cruise ships were designed with cinemas on board,

mini golf courses, water slides...

There's just so many things that you can do on the ship,

whether it's physical activities

like rock climbing or ice skating on board.

You can have ziplining across the ship, and surfing simulators.

You can pretend to surf on the ship.

I think mega ships are going to be the future of cruising,

because you're always going to want that next activity

and next adventure to go on.

Those mega ships really do have the wow factor.

They are designed to keep passengers entertained 24 hours a day.

I've been an entertainer of all kinds - singer, dancer,

on all the different lines.

Year round from January to January, it's been fantastic.

We've seen some top class performances, haven't we? Yeah.

Big stars on board, haven't we? Over the years.

Yes, we have. We've seen Ronnie Corbett, Claire Sweeney...

Gary Wilmot. Gary Wilmot.

Ooh, Tom O'Connor's been on board.

The ship really becomes the destination,

and you actually don't want to leave it to go into port,

because there's so much to do and so much to see and experience

that, actually, you don't want to get off.

In the last 20 years, passenger numbers have tripled to 30 million.

The cruise companies have positioned themselves

so they've manage to please all of their customers all the time.

There are mainstream brands, premium brands, luxury brands.

And different operators target different countries.

For example, Carnival Princess appeals to the American market.

P&O is aimed at us Brits,

and Costa Cruises targets the Italians.

So, as the industry grew,

they really could offer something for everyone.

You might call it accessible luxury,

and these brands are owned

by a surprisingly small number of operators.

The lion's share, around 70% of the market,

is made up of just three cruise lines -

Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian.

Combined, they bring in nearly 40 billion US dollars a year -

and out of the big three, Carnival has developed a bit of a reputation

for eating up the competition

to broaden their reach into different markets.

Everyone knows P&O.

Well, they were bought by Carnival in 2003.

Cunard, bought by Carnival,

Holland America, Carnival,

and, yep, Costa Cruises, Carnival.

These brands might be owned by the same three cruise companies,

but prices vary enormously.

The general rule is the lower the ticket price,

the more little extras you'll pay for on board.

So as the prices have come down,

some of the little special little things that used to have

have also gone with them -

things like free ice creams at certain times of day.

They'll be selling you all sorts of excursions and drinks packages,

and...even to go on an on a tour of the ship costs money these days,

which it never used to.

And drinks on board can actually end up costing more

than the cruise price itself.

So, you just have to be careful

about what you're doing on your cruise and just budget for it.

They try and sort of to sell to you.

It's very quick, very easy. They are experts in doing it.

Onboard excursions, speciality restaurants, the photography,

the spas - they will try and get money out of you in many ways.

The reason being is, you're on the ship -

you are a captive audience.

So, when I go on a cruise, I happily pay for speciality dining,

things like shore excursions,

and I also like to spend money in the spa.

So, I always do spend quite a bit on a cruise.

And all these costs soon add up

and become a significant revenue stream for the cruise lines.

In just one day, a ship with 5,000 people on board

could make over £50,000 in profit from a shore excursion.

Academic and advocate for a more transparent cruise industry

Professor Ross Klein has been studying the revenue generated

by cruise ships for decades.

They're going to hold back 50% or more of what you pay

as their commission for selling it to you.

They're going to get kickbacks as high as 40%

through their shopping programme

from the stores they advertise ashore.

Add this to the ticket price

and, on the larger ships, profits could be over £1 million

in just one week.

Over £150,000 profit a day.

It's big business.

in terms of takings,

around 70% of the revenue that makes it into a cruise company's coffers

is from ticket sales.

The other 30% is made up of all those little extras

when we're on board -

and every penny of revenue counts,

because this is an industry with very high fixed costs.

Just staff wages can add up to over £100,000,000 a day.

Then there's the food, the fuel, maintenance - the list goes on.

So, it's little wonder cruise lines are doing away with small luxuries

to cut their costs.

Back in the mid-1990s,

Royal Caribbean stopped providing chocolate on the pillows at night,

a turndown service, to save $50,000 annually.

But cutting back on freebies isn't the only way

cruise companies save money.

They can maximise profits by incorporating their businesses

in tax havens, and by having their ships fly a flag of convenience.

Can you tell me how cruise operators use flags of convenience?

Yes, it's actually very similar to offshore financial centres. Right?

So, if you register with this offshore registry,

with this flag of convenience,

you have really a whole different idea

in terms of what you're paying for taxes.

So, it really can, and allows, for tax avoidance.

Take Carnival. Although their headquarters is in Miami,

they have ships flying the Panamanian flag,

the flag of the Bahamas and the Maltese flag -

all tax havens - and the company itself is incorporated in Panama.

So, that's why Carnival Corporation

can earn $3 billion net profit and have paid no income tax.

They're registered in Panama.

A big fat zero - zero tax? And Royal Caribbean, the same thing.

They're registered in Liberia.

They pay no corporate income tax.

NCL is registered in the Bahamas,

and they, again, pay no corporate income tax.

It's the beauty of being registered

someplace other than where you're actually operating from.

Incredible.

The cruise lines say that the countries they visit

benefit from the port and maritime fees

that they have to pay around the world.

During 2018, in the US alone,

the cruise industry contributed over $50 billion to the economy -

but, over the years, the operators have come under fire

for other ways they reduce their running costs.

Coming up, we take a look at the disasters and PR nightmares

that could have rocked the cruise industry.

From poor working conditions...

They'd be packed into cabins, possibly six to cabin.

The company itself knows that it can basically exploit the little guy.

..to sinking ships.

I had friends on board.

It's very sad. It's shocking.

The rise of the cruise industry is one of the most extraordinary

boom stories of our time.

But of all the Covid casualties...

..it's one of the most spectacular.

Since the 1970s, when just a handful of purpose-built ships

carried 500,000 passengers a year, it's ballooned to a fleet

with over 300 ships carrying 30 million holiday-makers,

it's now an industry valued at well over £100 billion.

It boomed by making luxury affordable to everyone.

But at the heart of luxury is outstanding service,

which requires a high headcount of staff to pamper

and attend to our every need.

This quality of service is the main reason why the satisfaction levels

that cruise holidays command,

have always been among the highest of anything in the tourism business.

People come away thinking they've had more,

they've had their expectations exceeded.

And to keep the passengers pampered, the larger ships can have

over 2,000 staff on board.

They work very hard.

And not only that, not only do they work hard,

but they're always pleasant.

On one of the cruises I went on,

I would order at midnight a hot chocolate every night,

and that just ended up being my thing.

And one day when I called room service, he answered, saying,

"One hot chocolate, anything else?

And I said, "You got me, you know what I like,

"nothing else, like, that's perfect."

You meet a waiter on one cruise and you might turn up in the dining room

up to a year or more later, and they actually remember you,

and they'll come over and hug you

and show you photographs of their children,

and I think that is brilliant.

But the luxury of doting staff comes at a lower cost

to the cruise operator than you might think.

They're well known for hiring workers from developing nations,

and thanks to the use of flags of convenience,

cruise ships aren't necessarily bound by the same workers' rights

that you have in the UK.

Some crew can expect a seven-day working week, 12 hour shifts,

cramped living quarters and low wages.

We have a lot of Filipino cruise members,

we have a lot of Indonesians.

People from all over the world

are working on board the cruise ship

and they're away for six, seven, eight, nine months at a time.

We've bought presents for their children when we're in ports,

that they could take home.

One of them had a brand-new baby he hadn't even seen yet,

which is... Which is really sad.

David is a former cruise ship photographer.

So, when I was working on the ships, they had to go away

from the passenger areas during the... When they weren't working.

They'd have a crew bar, but they'd be packed into cabins,

possibly six to a cabin.

And after working for five years on cruise ships, Nick,

part of the sports team and Kenner, a dancer,

know first-hand the huge discrepancies in pay

and working conditions for crew on cruise ships.

The system that's put in place on the cruise ship

are set, you know, ranks.

You've got no stripes, which is, you're bottom.

Working crew in the engines, we call "Blue Boys",

obviously because they wear blue overalls all the time.

Then it kind of goes up from there, like restaurants, bar.

As you get higher you're getting into the entertainment

side of things, which is where we come into play,

which is a huge stripe position.

Below, too... There's a difference.

There's a difference the way they get treated.

Also in terms of living accommodations...

..so you have deck zero, which is basically where all

of the dancers, the ice skaters, the ice cast, the cruise division,

all of those people are staying.

And then you have the Blue Boys who are on the tween deck.

So that's the deck below.

So deck zero is about sea level.

And the tween deck is completely underwater.

It's horrendous.

And then we don't think that the cabins could get smaller,

but they literally get smaller.

They get a job on a cruise ship and it's really good money for them.

It's - even though they're getting paid very minimum

of what they can get paid.

So they're really grateful for that.

But the company itself knows

that it can basically exploit the little guy.

Seafarer's Help, how may I help you?

For 15 years, Chester Quintal has been on the front line

at the International Seafarer Welfare and Assistance Network,

managing helplines that take calls from crew

concerned about their working conditions.

So, as helpline manager, I've seen anecdotal evidence

from our cases of seafarers, from the Philippines, from India,

groups of seafarers working 18, 16 hours per day.

And they say to us that they are pressured to log...

..a shorter number of hours per day,

instead of logging the correct time.

But for many workers from developing countries, the pay on ships

will be far more than they could earn at home.

Clearly, there is mutual advantage here.

The corporation gets the labour and the employee gets

financial benefit on it.

However, if that is not done correctly, not done fairly,

that means that the employee actually can get harmed.

So that can be in terms of working conditions,

in terms of the type of expectations of their labour.

You know, what sort of hours are they working?

What sort of conditions are they working in?

And also an issue of remuneration.

So, how much are they getting paid?

In the developed world...

..we like to go on cheap holidays.

We like to buy...

..cheap goods.

I think, until that change...

..there will always be seafarers out there...

..who will most likely, erm...

..suffer.

The rights of crew have improved significantly in recent years.

In 2013, industry watchdogs implemented

the Maritime Labour Convention, setting minimum standards

for workers on ships, including set hours for work, and rest,

payment of wages and repatriation at the end of contracts.

But paying low wages isn't the only way the cruise lines

minimise running costs to make cruising affordable to the masses.

When ships aren't bound by the strict laws enforced

in some countries, operators can be tempted to save money

in other areas, like their environmental obligations.

In 2017, Princess Cruises,

owned by the largest of the cruise operators, Carnival,

pleaded guilty to deliberately polluting the ocean

by using a so-called magic pipe to syphon off oily engine waste,

dumping it into the ocean off the coast of Southampton.

They were fined $40 million,

which might just be the biggest fine

that's ever been handed to a cruise company.

But it isn't a one-off.

Over the last ten years, there have been 78 cited cases

of environmental violations by cruise lines.

Last year alone, Holland America, Maritime Executive and Carnival

were handed out fines with a combined worth

of over 20 million US dollars.

The reality is, that these huge floating hotels, by nature,

also have to be floating rubbish bins.

Everything that is consumed on board eventually ends up as waste.

Well, if you take one of the largest ships afloat,

the ones that Royal Caribbean operate

that have about 6,000 passengers,

that single ship in a one week voyage

is going to produce 15 million litres of grey water from showers,

from sinks, from the galley,

from - they empty the swimming pool...

All the water except the water from toilets...

..is going to produce 1.2 million litres of...

..of sewage or black water.

It's going to produce food waste, cardboard, bottles,

everything else that gets packaged.

That is a phenomenal amount of waste, isn't it?

A cruise ship with 6,000 people is a small town,

and it produces all the same problems.

As an ex-cruise photographer,

David has seen first-hand how cruise ships used to discard their waste.

Cruise ships were far more polluting back in the '80s,

and I personally witnessed the bin bags being hurled off the back deck,

erm, hundreds of them, probably.

I have to confess, I was guilty on one occasion of,

as you can imagine, as a cruise ship photographer,

we had thousands of pictures left over

and one night we went up on deck

and we hurled them off into the sea...

..thinking that was the last we'd see them.

And about a month later...

..we got severely reprimanded,

as all our pictures had washed up on someone's beach...

..and every one of them had the cruise line

and the name of the ship written on it.

So I feel terribly guilty about that.

But, you know, we're living in a different world now, aren't we?

How much would it cost for these ships

to deal with their waste in a responsible way?

Royal Caribbean was caught discharging oily bilge overboard.

The chief engineers were asked, "Well, why were they doing it?"

And they said, "Well, we could save $80,000 a year per ship

"by not using the screens that would filter out the oil."

So, imagine all of the other savings that can be found,

by either mishandling or otherwise not treating waste in the most...

..environmentally responsible manner.

Cruise Lines International Association

say that some cruise ships repurpose 100% of the waste

generated onboard by reducing, reusing, donating,

recycling and converting waste into energy.

Cruise ships recycle 60% more waste per person

than the average person recycles onshore each day.

But what do the passengers think when cruise ships are caught out

for behaving badly?

It wouldn't put me off cruising.

Nothing will.

However, if I did find a cruise ship had done something,

I might look at the cruise line itself,

rather than just the whole industry.

Remarkably, it took a whistle-blower to catch out Carnival,

and not an industry watchdog.

Some of the flagship states that cruise companies operate under

don't require reports on wrongdoing like environmental incidents,

safety issues, accidents and even crimes.

Just take a look at this - OK, illness outbreak,

what have we got here? Fuel spill, then a fire.

Here, a fine for polluting.

And here, a crew member falls overboard and drowns.

And the really terrible thing is,

is that this list hasn't been compiled by the cruise lines,

but it's the work of a single man, Ross Klein.

Over the last 30 years, Ross Klein has been compiling a database

of incidents that's been used as a reference in Senate hearings,

criminal cases and environmental campaigns.

When I first started doing my research, I became interested in,

"Well, how many times do ships collide, do ships catch on fire?"

The industry, they don't keep track of those things.

If you go in and look at past incidents,

you then have patterns that create a foreseeability.

And if you have foreseeability, there's liability,

and that's what they're afraid of.

The other part is that having accidents

doesn't make them look good.

So they want to, if possible, minimise these incidents

or make them as invisible as possible.

According to the data that he's collected over the last 30 years,

95% of issues that passengers face won't be life threatening.

But keeping a lid on these incidents

certainly keeps the cruise industry looking good.

But what about when a ship sinks?

When I saw Costa Concordia accident on the news,

I think it was just total shock.

Tend to feel that it couldn't happen or shouldn't happen.

So, actually, it was quite frightening.

There's always this feeling of "there but for the grace of God".

Costa Concordia shocked the world.

The £317 million ship struck a rock,

resulting in the death of 32 passengers and crew.

I had friends on board.

It was very sad, it's shocking.

I think the Costa Concordia was really a one-off,

and you'd have to think that,

otherwise none of us would go cruising.

And we move on, and that's certainly what some of the crew members

and the entertainers that I knew on board have done.

They've moved on and are still cruising... Still cruising.

But whether it's workers' rights, environmental issues

or health and safety,

nothing seems to have dampened our appetite for cruising.

In fact, the cruise operators have shrugged off disasters

and PR nightmares so well

that the industry has maintained its growth of 7% year after year,

enticing ten million new passengers to cruise in the last ten years -

and more passengers mean more ships.

Take a look at this... It's the order book for new ships.

There are billions and billions of pounds worth of ships on there.

Around 150 ships have been ordered over the next seven years.

That is incredible.

Last year before the pandemic, around 30 million people

hopped aboard a cruise ship,

and, for the operators, there was only one way forward...

..expansion.

What were projections like for the cruise industry?

Well, they were pretty strong.

They'd added ten million between 2000 and 2010,

and they'd added another ten million between 2010 and 2020.

And it seems very ambitious, and they expected to do that.

But no analysts, no cruise captain and none of the operators

saw what was on the horizon.

Coming up, we look at the devastating effect the pandemic

has had on the cruise industry.

It's been a train wreck.

It's etched in my mind, it really was a huge blow.

I haven't worked since March.

Annual profit of $1.9 billion for Royal Caribbean in 2019.

I mean, that's turned into an annual loss of about a billion.

But where does it go from here?

Well, the future is going to be dicey.

Is there a chance that the cruise industry could...

..go bust entirely?

Well, I must admit, there were times when I thought that.

We Brits love a cruise.

Last year, two million of us hopped

aboard a cruise ship, spending almost £3 billion.

In the UK alone, an estimated 80,000 people rely directly or indirectly

on the cruise industry for their livelihoods.

So when Covid hit, the impact was unimaginable.

In February this year,

images of the Diamond Princess quarantined in Japan with 3,700

people on board shocked the world.

This was the beginning of a crisis that crippled the cruise industry.

And for thousands of crew stranded on ships when the pandemic

first hit, it was like being on a floating prison.

Nick and Kanner found themselves stuck on a ship that was quarantined

outside of Miami.

We were in a crew cabin, first. So, crew cabins, no windows,

the majority of them. Bunk beds, quite small, very small, you know.

As the extension of the quarantine was put in place,

we actually moved up to guest cabins, which was, you know,

fortunate for us, but not every crew member actually got to do that.

Some crew members had to spend 15 days in a crew cabin with no

windows... Yeah. ..no fresh air... No fresh air, no sunlight.

And you can't leave the cabin?

So how long in total were you in quarantine for?

We were stuck on a ship for... 70 days? Yeah, about 70 days.

And according to the International Maritime Organisation,

even now, there are still workers on board cruise ships

unable to get home.

Imagine you're being stuck in your office

for more than one year.

You cannot go home to be with your family.

Imagine the suffering, the pain.

We are seeing an increase of cases where my colleagues in the help line

will provide emotional support and counselling.

So I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It's being described as a humanitarian crisis.

And sea farers have become collateral victims of this pandemic.

And for those that rely on the cruise industry on land

in the UK, the effect on jobs and everyday life

has been catastrophic.

How did it affect you?

It's been a train wreck. It literally turn the taps off

on the cruise ships, trying to cancel cruises,

send people back home.

If you're a travel agent and you legally have to get them back,

so you have to pay for the cost of the flights.

It's cost me an absolute fortune.

I've been working in the travel industry for 25 years,

really until Covid hit.

And at that point, my heart was utterly broken because that saw

the end of my travel career and my cruising career as well.

All of a sudden, Boris said, "No more going anywhere.

"Corona is here, let's lock down."

And so I haven't been anywhere since March.

I haven't cruised since March.

I haven't worked since March.

I'm working 100 hours a week doing different things, delivering food,

delivering furniture, doing house removals.

It's one of those moments that I will remember forever.

It's etched in my mind.

It really was a huge blow, very devastating and actually

something that I haven't got over

and possibly won't for many years to come.

And the shutdown of the cruise industry has had a global impact.

Communities that rely on tourism brought in by the ships

have been floored by the pandemic.

What's the human cost of the pandemic

within the cruise industry?

A lot of the crew support their families with jobs

that they have on the ships.

So even a year off is going to make a big difference to them.

But the real cost is in the destinations which the ships go to.

It's the retail, it's the guides, it's, you know, the shops.

You know, if you're Egyptian, you know, living on the poverty line

when the ship comes in, it's how they live there in Asia and the

Indian subcontinent where the ships are being going in for years.

And there are businesses and people there and families

there that depend on it, and it's gone.

So knowing that there's all these people who should

have been working on a cruise ship and now, maybe, they'll be

struggling with their families, that part breaks my heart.

And there's no guarantee the cruise ships will be coming back

in the same way.

Meanwhile, there are 150 ships worth £60 billion on order

over the next seven years.

It's a monumental amount of debt and it's leveraged against the income

from 30 million passengers that simply aren't there.

Owning a cruise ship is a bit like owning a taxi.

The moment the taxi's in the garage, it's not making the owner

any money.

Only for cruise lines, the overheads are astronomical,

in fact, just having a cruise ship in dock in Southampton can cost

£50,000 a day, which is why so-called ghost ships now sit

off the coast waiting for the pandemic to pass.

But even being anchored up is a costly business.

A cruise ship needs to stay steady on the sea, so the engines

need to keep running and the crew maintain the ship ready

for if and when passengers come on board,

and none of this comes cheap.

Carnival alone is reportedly burning through $650 million US dollars

a month while its ships sit idle.

Just how devastating has Covid been for the cruise ship industry?

We've talked about, you know, annual profit of $1.9 billion

for Royal Caribbean in 2019.

That's turned into an annual loss of about a billion because of Covid.

The ships aren't moving. Between Royal Caribbean, Carnival and

Norwegian, they're haemorrhaging $1 billion a month.

In an attempt to stay afloat financially, cruise lines

are retiring ships from service earlier than planned, scrapping

ships before that time and finding any way they can to cut

down on their operational costs.

But without the ability to take passengers, some operators have gone

bust, while others are on the brink of bankruptcy.

So, what does the future hold for the cruise industry?

Well, the future is going to be dicey.

Largely because they can't offer the cruise product that they've always

offered under the old business model and still make money.

So I think in the next year, year and a half,

it's going to be a real question of, number one, whether a cruise

is safe, but also, what is a cruise going to be?

When you go ashore, are you going to be stuck in a bubble?

Given their past arrogance, and given their need

to make profit through onboard spending,

how they're going to do that effectively and have a product

that the consumer is going to be happy consuming.

Is there a chance that the cruise industry could...

..go bust entirely?

Well, I must admit, there were times when I thought

that during the course of the year, when we could see no end to it.

Erm... I don't think so now.

I think if the vaccine is what we hope it's going to be...

I think there will be enough there for them to come back.

But, of course, some cruise lines have gone bust.

They hadn't the resources to hang on.

The big companies were very well resourced,

have been able to raise the money.

Erm, had enough friends out there who believe

that they will come back for them to enable them to do that.

And I think they will.

With 30 million people a year cruising,

I'm very, very confident they'll come back.

So you don't expect there to be some kind of Covid legacy

after all of this, you know, a fear of, you know, cruise ships

for being a hotbed for virus?

Absolutely not.

If you see some of those things are being talked about now in terms

of protection for the passengers, everybody being tested

before they board and crew being tested regularly,

social distancing ideas.

Social distancing measures on a cruise ship?

That's surely going to hit their bottom line?

Absolutely it will, they need about 50% of the passengers on board

to break even.

The Royal Caribbean have said that these big Oasis class ships

can break even at 30%.

If we can just break even in 2021, that will be fine,

everybody will be happy and we'll get back to normal

in 2022, I believe.

Operators like Royal Caribbean are already offering

scaled-back cruises in and out of the same port with no stop-offs,

to test their Covid protocols.

When cruising does start up full operations again, you can expect

face masks and Covid tests for everyone on board.

Much stricter rules when you go ashore.

And it's bye-bye to the buffet and hello, plated dining.

With all the protocols they're putting in place,

all the cleaning, all the testing which will be in place

before you get on there, I believe it will be the safest place

that you could actually be.

Oh, this is so much fun, the surfing simulator.

I'm definitely type of the type of person to see how everybody else

does before I will jump on board.

So I probably won't be the first, but I know I won't be the last

to get back on a cruise ship.

The pandemic hasn't changed the way I feel about cruising.

If somebody called me today and said, "There's a cruise,

"fly this afternoon," I would go.

I would definitely go, 1,000%.

I would happily accept the protocols and what I needed to do to keep

myself and other passengers safe.

I just miss it so much and I cannot wait to get the opportunity

to go back on a cruise again.

I think that the health and safety of everybody on board,

crew and passengers will be at highest level.

It certainly hasn't put me off.

I'll be happy to go on a cruise.

My first one is booked for April.

Fingers crossed, I'm getting on board.

It's been too long.

I haven't gone this long without a cruise for 20, 30 years.

So we're obviously a little sad that we're not going cruising.

And in fact, we should be cruising as of tomorrow,

flying out today to Athens.

But fortunately, we have a narrow boat...

..and, well, I'm Hazel's butler...

..and the deckhand.

Hazel is the hotel manager and...

..entertainment and, of course, the captain.

So we've got it sorted.

There are still so many unanswered questions about the future

of the cruise lines, that it's anyone's guess

how and when they'll start up again.

But one thing is for certain...

..there is a legion of cruise lovers that can't wait

to get back on board when and if the ships start cruising again.

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