Today’s (Mar 22) NY Times has a fascinating article on the “backstage” operation involved in getting 6000 passengers off a ship, washing 93,000 pounds of linens, loading up all the food and water, and getting the next 6000 passengers out to sea—in just 12 hours.
The article’s subject is Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, one of the largest, but the story is typical of what’s faced by most cruise ships, because they only make money when they’re not sitting in port waiting to go. Royal Caribbean has had various efficiency experts at work with them on how best to do it, and has even , to an extent, designed new ships around the turnaround.
Read more HERE
Photo: Wikimedia / Baldwin040
Sometimes when I’m in Vancouver I head to Canada Place to watch the cruise ships coming and going. You actually get to see the belly of the ship being loaded. The dozens of palates of food that go on is amazing. Would you have thought a cruise ship would consume 3 massive containers of potatoes in a week? 2 of onions? Might even have been more, that’s all I saw.
It is truly a model of efficiency.