Eaux troubles : Les navires de croisière au temps de la COVID-19

• Main Authors: Alexandra Arellano, Parvin Shoosh Nasab
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Presses de l'Université du Québec 2020-11-01
• Series: Téoros
• Subjects: tourism; COVID-19; cruise ship; mobilities; epidemic
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/teoros/7548

Giant cruise liners conjure dreams of opulence, luxury, and entertainment mingled with a promise of culture discovery. Despite their recent growth in popularity and economic success, critics accuse the cruise industry of contributing significantly to overtourism, pollution, labour inequalities, and operating via opaque legal ownership structures. Successfully navigating global pressure for sustainability, even major outbreaks of rotavirus, norovirus, or E. coli have failed to turn the industry’s activities around. The production of ever more immense ships, incorporating ultra-modern technologies, robotic and digital innovations, illustrates the delusion of grandeur on the part of this economic model. While previously nothing seemed to shake this tourism sector, COVID-19 is likely to be a game-changer. Following the worldwide closure of ports, cruise activities have effectively ceased. In addition to cruise operators currently opposing proposed new rules of physical distancing on board, the dismantling and the accelerated decommissioning of cruise ships by several companies is evidence of an industry on the verge of collapse. In the time of COVID-19, the romantic notion of cruise ships has turned into one of floating viral incubators fueling the pandemic. As a microcosm of globalization and representative par excellence of unequal tourism mobilities, more than 60,000 crew members were still adrift after three months of the pandemic, trapped in the political jaws of the crisis. This novel virus has placed the industry under a critical spotlight—The Love Boat is no longer having fun.