Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

So you got a partner …

… he/she should be working towards maximizing the returns for your partnership. Each one should be pursuing what’s best for “us”, not “me”. This is a basic premise for any partnership: think marriage, business, musical band …

A partnership is an arrangement where parties, known as partners, agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. The partners in a partnership may be individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments or combinations. Organizations may partner to increase the likelihood of each achieving their mission and to amplify their reach. A partnership may result in issuing and holding equity or may be only governed by a contract. – Source: Wikipedia

Here is the partnership objectives that should be operating in our Caribbean marketplace:

Caribbean Port-of-Call: We need travelers to visit our shores and spend money to spur economic activity.

Cruise Line: We need passengers to book our cruises to consume Caribbean hospitality from onboard ships.

But a basic fault seem to be present in this partnership between the Cruise Line industry and their Caribbean ports-of-call:

The relationship appears to be one of détente – easing of strained relations – rather than a true partnership.

“I won’t destroy you if you don’t destroy me”.

While the partnership model may mean hoping that all parties profit, the détente model assumes a posture of mitigating mutual destruction. Yet, destroying the image of a port city is exactly what this cruise ship Captain has appeared to have accomplished in Nassau, Bahamas in December (2018) with the release of this personal Crime-Warning letter:

Discouraging his passengers from consuming a port-city?! That seems counter-productive! That seems counter-partnering!

See this related news article here, depicting the complaint and rebuke of the Bahamas Tourism officials towards this cruise line:

Title: Bahamas persuades Royal Caribbean to tone down warnings about crime in Nassau

Royal Caribbean Cruise Line has agreed to stop warning its cruise passengers about increased crime in Nassau and identifying parts of the city to avoid.

Dionisio D’Aguilar, minister of tourism and aviation for the island nation, told the Nassau Tribune this week that he employed “gentle nudging” to persuade Royal Caribbean to drop an “unwarranted” passenger advisory being distributed to disembarking passengers of the cruise line’s Anthem of the Seas.

D’Aguilar reached out to Miami-based Royal Caribbean after several cruise industry websites reported on the letter, signed by Anthem of the Seas’ captain Srecko Ban.

“We feel it is important to make our guests aware that Nassau has been experiencing an increase in crime,” the letter said.

A copy of Ban’s letter posted on various websites, dated Dec. 26, pointed out that the most common types of crimes are nonviolent, “such as theft of personal items,” and noted that “thousands of visitors routinely travel to Nassau without incident.”

It went on to provide safety tips and urged visitors to Nassau to be mindful of their personal safety “like visitors to all major foreign cities in the world today.”

Among the tips:

— Leave valuables and irreplaceable items inside your stateroom safe.

— Avoid wearing obviously expensive jewelry

— Carry only cash and credit cards needed on each outing.

— Use discretion when handling cash publicly.

— Keep belongings, especially expensive cameras and phones, secure and in sight.

The letter also recommended guests “not venture too far from tourist areas,” and identified as “particular areas of concern” the Sand Trap, the Fish Fry at Arawak Cay, “and areas of Nassau referred to as ‘Over the Hill’ by locals, which should be avoided after sunset.”

After stories about the letter were posted by such sites as cruiseradio.net and travelpulse.com, D’Aguilar on Dec. 27 told a Bahamas newspaper, the Nassau Tribune, that he felt “blindsided.”

But the Tribune story noted that the Anthem captain’s warning mirrored a January 2018 travel advisory by the U.S. State Department, telling tourists to “exercise increased caution in the Bahamas because of crime” and avoid the Over the Hill and Fish Fry areas at night.

The Canadian government warned tourists to avoid the same two areas in its own advisory on Dec. 20. Both countries’ advisories listed armed robberies, burglaries, purse snatchings, theft, fraud and sexual assaults as the most common crimes against travelers.

The Tribune story quoted D’Aguilar saying he had never heard complaints about the Fish Fry in numerous meetings with cruise line executives.

“I don’t know of any major or significant crime happening to a cruise passenger in quite some time,” he said. “I don’t know about petty crime, but in my humble opinion Nassau is as safe as any other city.”

Despite the warnings, the State Department advisory also reported statistics from Royal Bahamas Police Force Commissioner Anthony Ferguson showing a 14 percent drop in overall crime and a 22 percent drop in violent crime. “The one exception was a 10 percent increased in murders,” the advisory said, adding most reported violent crimes took place in areas not frequented by tourists.

On Monday, the Nassau Tribune posted a follow-up story quoting D’Aguilar saying he convinced Royal Caribbean through “gentle nudging” to withdraw its crime warning and replace it with “a more generalized warning … that does not mention Nassau by name and could be taken as referring to any of its ports of call.”

A story posted Wednesday on BahamasLocal.com, a search engine site, quoted a statement by Royal Caribbean pledging to replace the letters with a generic statement in its daily newsletter urging travelers to “use the same common sense you would in any major city” and consult the U.S. State Department for specific information about any country on the cruise line’s itinerary.

Reached by email Wednesday, Royal Caribbean spokeswoman Tracy Quan verified that the story in BahamasLocal “is accurate.”

The story further quotes Michael Bayley, president and CEO of Royal Caribbean International, as saying Nassau remains the cruise line’s most popular port of call among more than 300 destinations.

Source:The Sun-Sentinel – South Florida Daily Newspaper – Posted January 2, 2019; retrieved January 24, 2019 from: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-bz-royal-caribbean-bahamas-crime-warning-20190102-story.html

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VIDEO – ANTHEM OF THE SEAS – Highlights of Royal Caribbean’s amazing second Quantum-Class-Cruiseship – https://youtu.be/nwsS9PaF94w

Cruiseclips

Published on Nov 14, 2015 – A video produced by: Tobias Bruns in cooperation with: Oceanliner Pictures.com Schiffsjournal.de Special thanks to Royal Caribbean International! Want to book a cruise with the “Anthem of the Seas”? check out www.kreuzfahrten-mehr.de Informations about the ship (german langauge) ausfürhrliches Schiffsportrait auf Schiffsjournal.de: http://www.schiffsjournal.de/schiffsp…

Category: Travel & Events

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Related:

Bahamas unhappy with cruise passenger spending: no longer paying incentives to cruise lines.

It’s time to reboot the entire Cruise-Port-City eco-system. This is a familiar advocacy for the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean, a roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). “Stop competing“, the book urges, and start working together – collaborate, cooperate, confederate – as true partners.

Are there problems? Let’s collaborate to solve them.

You’re not making any profit? Then what changes can we make so that everyone wins.

There are no Bad Guys here; just the need to reboot. The first step is this rebooting must be the strategy of Collective Bargaining. The Go Lean book detailed this strategy (Page 32) early, as follows:

Cruise Line Collective Bargaining – Setting Matters Straight
The CU will collectively bargain with operators to garner more benefits and protections. In general, port cities are not gleaning much income from ship visits. In order to reboot the industry’s economic impact, changes need to be made, rescinding some exploitive rules the ships implemented and adding some new products, like smartcard e-purse options.

In addition, here are some suggestions, as summarized and excerpted from this advocacy in the Go Lean book (Page 193) entitled – 10 Ways to Impact Cruise Tourism:

More and more cruise ships are equipped with amenities once only available at on-shore facilities; think: ice-skating rink, zip line, go-cart racing, etc. – see foregoing VIDEO. This sends the message to on-island resorts that cruise lines will do Caribbean hospitality without them. This undermines any precept of a partnership.

This theme – trouble in the Cruise-Port-City eco-system – aligns with previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

The problems in cruise tourism are not just in the Bahamas alone; rather all Caribbean port-cities are affected; think Montego Bay, Jamaica; Saint Martin, Grand Cayman, etc.. In summary, the assumed partnership between cruise lines and port-cities needs to be rebooted. In fact, all the societal engines of the Caribbean – economics, security and governance – need to be rebooted. The defects are glaring! But a regional approach, rather than a national focus, allows us the opportunity to finally pursue better strategies, tactics and implementations to improve the tourism product for all.

The effort to improve the Cruise-Port-City eco-system is Day One/Step One in the Go Lean roadmap. These pursuits need to succeed sooner, rather than later.

Let’s do this! Let’s make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.