- From the perspective of the company that organize the cruise, Costa Cruceros, in this case, but all companies in the industry can be affected, as we can read in the following post of the hosteltur community.
- From the point of view of the ship, it could be extracted lessons from both, the preventive measures and the crisis management procedures.
- Can this scenario be considered as a BC scenario for this companies?
- It will depend on the decrease of the number of travelers, although it seems to be a simple falling in selling that can be softened by mechanisms of marketing ad advertising focused on rebuild trust.
- Has been the response of Costa Cruceros right?
- Crisis response activities has a mayor dependence from the crew than from the cruise company, whose mission is to coordinate activities and grant communications. In this way, Costa Cruceros established in both the web and in the twitter profile, a channel for continuous information. Apart from that, they offered a news conference on 16th of January.
From the liner point of view, the situation is a little bit more complicated. At risk of judging without having all the information, taking into account only the information published until now, it seems that there were a series of unexpected events and a set of human errors that led to, being benevolent, a deficient crisis management.
- Has crisis management procedures failed?
- Unknowing this procedures, it would probably were precise and met with international standards, as Costa Cruceros argue.There are a organism, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) that is in charge of maintain up to date the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, on which depend this procedures and ship evacuation.
- If this procedures are well defined, whats has been the problem?
- Company has also declared that crew have received training to grant that they have all knowledge about the emergency procedures, even passengers, as the legislation define, although everybody knows that simulations usually has nothing to do with a real incident. It seems that some errors has occurred because a lack of coordination.
- So, who is responsible for this situation?
- All indications are that the mail responsible is the coordinator of emergency procedures, captain Francesco Schettino, although this has to be said by a judge. This fact calls into the question that if the different maritime accreditations procedures are well defined and accomplished.
Apart for the legal facts about compensations, assurance and so on, the consequences that a shipwreck like this will give, from a BC point of view this is the right moment to be extracted, as has Koji Sekimizu (IMO Secretary-General) has said.
I extract the following conclusions:
