The cruise ship Diamond Princess docked at Sydney’s Circular Quay last week with 158 sick passengers on board. Pic Stephen Cooper
THIS week in Sydney, more than 150 green around the gill customers tumbled back onto dry land after an outbreak of norovirus gastroenteritis turned a dream cruise from New Zealand into a vomit inducing ride on the high seas.
About as far from the Love Boat as you could get there with reports of people vomiting in the pool and rushing through the decks, desperate for a spare loo.
“You would be [in] the elevator and I would be hitting the button with my knuckle and other people would be running down the corridor holding their mouths ... a lot of the staff would be wearing face masks, gloves,” passenger Stephen Dinale, from Sydney, told Fairfax Media.
But it shouldn’t come as a surprise with a public health expert telling news.com.au cruise ships can be breeding grounds for stomach bugs.
In fact it’s so easy to spread norovirus that just one sick passenger getting on board can lead to hundreds of people falling ill and spending most of their trip in the bathroom.
While a marketing expert has said the time needed to rebuild a company’s reputation after customers fall ill can last far longer than the initial bout of gastro.
Microscopic view of Salmonella bacteria, which like norovirus gastroenteritis, can be found in food and isn’t going to make for a great holiday.Source:Supplied
The Diamond Princess, one of the flagships of the Princess Cruises fleet, tied up at the overseas passenger terminal in Sydney’s Circular Quay on Thursday to disgorge its 4000 passengers including 158 who had suffered with the norovirus.
It’s not an isolated case with gastro outbreaks on board cruise ships occurring commonly including three in the past two months alone.
Passengers on the P&O cruise ship Pacific Eden labelled it a “floating disaster” after about 50 of the 1500 people on board were taken ill with norovirus in December, while 182 passengers out of the 3566 on board the luxury Royal Caribbean cruise ship Explorer of the Seas were also struck down by a stomach bug in the same month.
Last October, more than 170 passengers were sick with a stomach bug during an eight-day cruise from Sydney on Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas while in late 2014, similar sickly sailings occurred on Princess Cruises’ Dawn Princess after it left Melbourne and Princess Cruises’ Sea Princess travelling from Singapore to Fremantle.
Food can harbour all manner of yukky bugs.Source:Supplied
CRUISE SHIPS PRONE TO BUGS
Princess Cruises, which along with P&O, is owned by US-British cruise giant Carnival, told news.com.au that the chances of becoming ill were one in 15 in the general community but only one-in-12,000 on board a cruise ship due to the “very high levels of sanitation”.
But Professor Raina Macintyre of the University of NSW said ships were particularly prone to the bug which caused an inflammation of the intestinal tract and can lead to vomiting, diarrhoea, nausea and cramps.
“While you might only wander into a shopping centre once in a week, in a cruise ship you are in a closed environment with a lot of people using shared facilities over and over again for one to two weeks and just one person who has the virus, if they vomit in the bathrooms, means it can be present in for the next person who comes in.” she said.
Just cleaning the sink tops and toilets might not be enough with walls and doors, cups and saucers, hands and faces and potentially anywhere the affected person has touched, harbouring the virus.
The virus can often be found in food with one of the most notable norovirus outbreaks in Australia occurring in 1991 when 25,000 passengers on domestic flights all came down with gastro. It turned out the in-flight orange juice was laden with the bug.
Prof Macintyre said strong disinfectants, meticulous cleaning, frequent hand washing and strict quarantine protocols for people who had fallen sick were essential to contain an outbreak.
Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas also had a sickly sailing. Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied
IMPACT ON A COMPANY’S REPUTATION
But what of a company’s reputation when images flash around the globe of sick passengers after using your service?
Con Stavros, Associate Professor of Marketing at RMIT University, told news.com.au the service industry had it “a bit tough” because whereas defects in factories could be resolved before a customer buys a product, if something goes wrong on a plane, train, or indeed a cruise ship, everyone knows about it.
“You have to get to work very quickly, the new forms of media are very challenging for companies with people updating about their illness in real time,” he said. “But it also provides companies with a chance to respond quickly so they can keep people informed.”
However, customers had a “zone of tolerance” he said, understanding that if, for instance, a plane is delayed that could be the weather’s fault as much as the airline’s.
Senior Lecturer in Marketing at University of Technology Sydney, David Waller, said trust can easily be eroded if a crisis was handled badly.
“Gastro can last a few days but damage to a reputation can last a lifetime if a customer decides never to use that company again,” Dr Waller said.
He said companies shouldn’t look for an easy fix or ignore problems as word of mouth was critically important in building an organisation’s reputation.
“The company has to restore confidence in their brand following a crisis and it’s difficult,” said Dr Waller. “No matter how good you are you’re not going to make everyone happy.”
To get an organisation like Princess Cruises back on an even keel, the company could demonstrate it was a matter that was beyond their control; show how they have improved their processes and put the problem into perspective.
Companies that mishandle crises can be in for a stormy reception from customers. Picture: Jeremy PiperSource:News Corp Australia
Carnival Australia spokesman David Jones said more than a million Australians took a cruise every year and very few took ill due to “hygiene standards that are employed and the proactive steps that are taken in the event of illness on board”.
“It takes relatively few reports of guests with gastrointestinal symptoms for even higher levels of sanitation to be introduced to contain any illness.”
Mr Jones said he expected the popularity of cruises to remain unaffected. “We have every confidence in the cruising community’s innate ability to put these matters in perspective.”
Prof Stavros said brands, such as Princess Cruises, which Carnival Australia is the parent company for, this month and P&O and Royal Caribbean last month, inevitably “take a bit of a hit” but they can still sail through if the good experiences on board outweighed the bad.
“If a company is empathetic and provides reassurance you may get a second or even a third or fourth chance. The public can be very forgiving,” he said.
But he had a warning. “The public will apportion blame and you don’t want to have too many things blamed on you and you don’t have too many incidents.”
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