World Cruise Ship
Cruising is considered to be a major part of the tourism industry today with millions of passengers traveling round the year. Cruising is a lifestyle that involves living on a boat or a ship over a period of time while traveling to different places for pleasure. Such pleasure trips could be for a few days or can be extended to round-the-world voyages. These voyages are done through a cruise ship, also known as a cruise liner.
A cruise ship or cruise liner is a passenger ship that travels around the globe where the voyage itself and the ship’s amenities are part of the experience. Mostly cruise ships function on routes that return passengers to their originating port. Conversely, dedicated transport oriented ocean liners do “line voyages” and transport passengers from one point to another, rather than on round trips. A world cruise ship also engages in longer trips which may not lead back to the same port for many months.
The history of world cruise ship reveals that the practice of cruising originally grew out of the transatlantic crossing tradition, which never took less than four days. The ocean liners included many luxuries in order to attract more passengers. Titanic being the most famous example had fine dining and well-appointed staterooms, to mention a few. But with the advent of the jet age in the 1960’s, intercontinental travelers largely preferred planes to ships, thus sending the ocean liner trade into a slow decline. This is when the cruising voyages gained popularity; slowly at first but at an increased rate from the 1980s onwards.
Initially the fledgling industry was primarily serviced by small redundant liners, and even the first purpose built cruise ships were small. But this changed after the success of the SS Norway that was originally an ocean liner SS France but was converted into a cruise ship later. Since then the size of cruise ship changed to a bigger one and gradually became the largest passenger ships ever built. Today, there are several hundreds of world cruise ships and even larger vessels are on the horizon. In fact, to destinations like Arctic and Antarctica cruise ships are almost the only way to visit. Oasis class vessels are mention worthy here as it is the largest passenger cruise ship.
Cruise ships are organized almost like floating hotels that provide a complete hospitality staff in addition to the usual ship’s crew. In fact, most luxurious ships have more crew than passengers. Adequate provisioning is also crucial especially on world cruise ships that serve thousands of meals at each seating. With passengers comes security, hence various security measures are also adapted by a world cruise ship like providing CCTV, metal detectors and x-rays to prevent weapons and contraband onboard; LRADs to deter pirates; personal identification card for passengers that are required for their identification while getting on or off the ship. In short, the prime concern for any world cruise ship is the utmost comfort, pleasure and security offered to its passengers.