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served some of the best and most inexpensive drinks around, passing on the savings from
buying alcohol at duty-free prices, often in the country where it was produced.
Nowadays, those savings stay with the cruise lines and drinks are at least as expensive as
they are on land. And ships are designed to encourage drinking, scattering bars and serving
stations throughout, according to Bob Dickinson, formerly of Carnival, who said “the idea
is that you should be able to get a drink wherever and whenever you want it.
“In a well-executed ship design, the most convenient way to go from your cabin to the
dining room should take you past a lounge,” he said. “And because most ships sail in warm
waters, you also need a highly visible bar by the pool—or even in it!”
Gambling brings in nearly as much profits. Spas, Internet fees, extra costs for fancier
restaurants, fees for sports and exercise classes, photographs and a DVD of the cruise—that
DVD can earn at least $100,000 in revenue on a short cruise—and souvenirs all bring in
money. As Mr. Dickinson wrote, “Everyone has already prepaid for their ticket and the
only variable left that will determine the overall revenue (and ultimately the overall profit-
ability) of a voyage is how much is spent on board.
“The truth is that selling goes on all of the time all over the ship,” he said, “and it makes
all the difference in the world when it comes to the bottom line.”
Convincing passengers to spend is part of the theater of a cruise, conjuring up “the va-
cation of a lifetime” with unique flashy shows. This is especially true for the third big profit
center for cruises: art sales.
Even though art auctions are relative newcomers to cruises, begun in the mid-1990s,
they are now big business and a serious source of money. The king of the cruise art auc-
tions is the previously mentioned Park West, a privately held Michigan firm with $300
million in sales each year. Cruise lines receive at least a 35 percent cut of every piece of
that artwork. Until 2010 Park West had something of a monopoly, selling aboard Carnival
Cruise, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Holland America, Regent and Oceania lines.
Enthusiasm is whipped up with flyers tucked into cabins, by announcements on the
in-house television channel and by lectures on how to buy art. At the auction we attended,
the salesman spoke convincingly about the quality of the paintings and artworks, the high
reputation of the artists, and the long-term investment value of the pieces. And everything,
he said, was guaranteed with appraisals of the fair market price and a generous return
policy.
But over the years hundreds of customers have complained that those guarantees are
sketchy. And they have tried to bring legal cases against Park West, but the gallery argued
that since the sales were made in international waters, the gallery was outside the jurisdic-
tion of the American legal system.
The customers felt cheated and started writing letters to their members of Congress and
their hometown newspapers. The narrative of the complaints was always the same: back
home the customers discover that the art they purchased was worth far less than they had
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