Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
More so perhaps than other sub-sector in the global tourism industries,
the organisational structure of the cruise ship industry both reflects and
reproduces increasingly transnational relations of ownership and labour
relations. By 1996, three of the world's largest companies, Royal Caribbean,
Carnival Corporation and Princess Cruises, controlled nearly 50% of the
market (Ioannides & Debbage, 1998: 112). In 2014 Carnival Cruise Lines
with their 10 brands and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd with their five brands
accounted for 63.6% of worldwide cruise revenues (41.8% and 21.8% respec-
tively) (Cruise Market Watch, 2014). However, although most of the major
cruise companies have their headquarters in the US, the ability to sail under
'flags of convenience' has enabled them to register in countries where labour
laws, taxes and maritime regulations are far more lax (Wood, 2000: 351).
Moreover, given the physical mobility of its primary asset, Wood describes
cruise ships as mobile chunks of nomadic capital which are able to avoid state
regulations (particularly where labour is concerned) wherever possible. Thus,
cruise liners draw on a global pool of migrant labour who benefit from far
fewer rights than their land-based counterparts. This is of particular concern
for the local workforce in the Caribbean, which according to Wood (2000:
354) is mostly unionised and enjoys higher levels of pay, thus deterring cruise
companies from recruiting in the region. The ethnic and social stratification
of the workforce within cruise ships also points to a substantial reconfigura-
tion of class relations that cuts across national and geographic boundaries.
However, Wood (2000: 353-358) demonstrates how the workforce is drawn
from cheaper labour markets across the world and segmented according to
ethnicity, thus enabling cruise companies to reinforce an internal division of
labour which exploits the precarious nature of employment in their respec-
tive countries of origin whilst being subject to the labour regulations of none.
With the exception, perhaps, of the cruise ship industry, the overwhelm-
ing proportion of the global tourism workforce is nevertheless drawn from
local and regional labour markets, as indeed are workers in most sectors in
the global economy (see Castells, 1996: 234-235). Notwithstanding the
intensification of capitalist social relations and the global reach of TTCs,
many tourist destination areas are characterised by the prevalence of infor-
mal tourist enterprise and the persistence of localised labour markets in
large formal-sector resorts. Often, workers may move between the informal
and formal sectors, depending upon seasonal fluctuations in demand for
labour. However, as Madsen-Camacho (1996) describes in her study of
resort development in Mexico, and as does Edensor (2004) in the case of the
numerous local businesses at the Taj Mahal, the survival of small, indepen-
dent, informal sector enterprises is often threatened by the construction of
large hotel complexes and attempts by large, external tour operators to
monopolise the flow of tourists to honey-pot tourist attractions. Eventually,
the decline in the number of tourists using local facilities may result in the
abandonment of these informal enterprises as the former owners are forced
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