Reference :- Alcohol swabs won't wipe Carnival's hands clean of the Ruby Princess coronavirus tragedy . What can they do ?
It is doubtless a tough time for the Carnival company and Princess Cruises . What will become of the Ruby Princess ? Though not much longer than the Titanic , it is twice the weight and cost twice as much to construct . Monte ( the motorcyclist ) reckons that is because of the number of poker machines , which are heavy devices . He says that is why the svelt lines of the great ocean liners have vanished. Well, whatever the reason you can't deny that modern passenger ships do look like floating public housing projects . And they are apparently just as bad for your health.
Dabbo ( the aborigine ) wanted to know how the disease got all the way to Italy so quickly . I told him it's not surprising , since the ship was built in Italy , and has an Italian captain . Although it is registered in Bermuda , the world's worst tax haven . Naturally you can't expect Princess cruises to cart all that poker machine money back to Italy to complicate things for the taxation authorities . Likewise , various Italian workplace standards, pay rates , and the suchlike would only confuse the foreigners cleaning out cabins and washing dishes . Registering the Ruby Princess in Bermuda streamlines certain matters very nicely .
Anyway , after investing 400 million yankee dollars on a floating gin palace one expects a reasonable return . And the Ruby Princess is not yet a decade old , so she has plenty of fun cruises left in her yet . But marketing them to a wary public will be challenging , what with many folk demanding that she be scuttled , and unceremoniously sent down to Davey Jone's locker .
Here at the Sky Reply , we have been working on a marketing strategy for Princess Cruises . My son , Ken junior , has come up with a few good ideas which he has outlined below .
1 . Don't let any oldies on the next cruise . Old folk can drop off their perch unexpectedly at any time , and a single death if an octogenerian falls off his stool after too many Pina Coladas , could raise fears of contagion .
2. Make masks and gloves a fun thing . Run Venetian style masked balls . With cruise ships about to be banned from the lagoon in Venice because they are trashing the place , it might be the closest to experiencing the real thing anybody can get . You could also run a " doctors and nurses " party . The possibilities are endless.
3. Offer free medical cover . It didn't look good charging people 450 quid to visit the ship's doctor when they came down with the sniffles shortly before expiring .
4. On the marketing brochure highlight FREE ALCOHOL . In the fine print you can reveal that it means free hand sanitizer , but nobody will notice until they have come aboard .
5. Take a lesson from the Fukushima nuclear disaster . A restaurant in Takaido , Tokyo , actually advertised that 80% of the food it served came from farms in the Fukushima prefecture . Their customer profile changed , as folk thrilled at the thought of consuming radioactive vittles booked tables in droves . Rather like chowing down on Fugu , I imagine . You could give out free T shirts saying "I survived coronavirus" , and rename the Ruby Princess the " Corona Queen " .
As somebody once said . Every disaster is an opportunity , and this must be one of the biggest opportunities we have seen in a long time .
Gabbo ( the aborigine ) has made a peculiar observation . He says the sinking of the Titanic , smugly called " unsinkable " at the time , marked the beginning of the decline of the British Empire . He says the impact of coronavirus on cruise ships , and then the world at large , will one day be seen as marking the end of neoliberalism and free market capitalism .
I have no idea what he is talking about .
Your comrade , Ken
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