Is Carnival cruising for a PR bruising?

Carnival's Twitter feed from 2/15/13

Carnival’s Twitter feed from 2/15/13

Updated

By now, virtually everyone in America knows about the mess that is the Carnival cruise ship Triumph.  The ship suffered an engine fire earlier this week that resulted in the ship being without electricity and drifting in the Gulf of Mexico.  The stories coming out of the Triumph were pretty ugly.  Raw sewage was reportedly seeping down walls, food was scarce, air conditioning was out, the ship was wallowing in heaving seas, and people were definitely not having a good time. The LA Times wrote that the cruise was a cross between television’s Survivor and the novel Lord of the Flies.

Then on Thursday, as the ship was under tow to port in Mobile, Alabama, CNN started doing wall-to-wall coverage of the “cruise from hell.” And passengers have not been shy about sharing their feelings via cell phones on social media.

So for those of us living in the media world, the question we all need to ask is: How will Carnival respond and recover from this public relations mess/crisis/disaster?

Update: Michael Sebastian at Ragan’s PR Daily says that while Carnival had a few missteps, their overall PR efforts were good.
NOTE: If you want to know more about this story, NPR’s Mark Memmott has a good round-up blog post on the topic.

 

 

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One Response to Is Carnival cruising for a PR bruising?

  1. P Wice says:

    I do believe Carnival has sustained a serious blow to its reputation (deserved or not) and will likely be working for some time to recoup lost business as a result of this incident…might be good time for bargain fares?

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