The cruise lines want passengers to think that their ship is like a floating paradise so they relax and spend money, but latest cruise disaster has prompted many future passengers to re-examine how they prepare for and take their cruises.

Before you cruise

Before you choose your cruise, get a sanitation report on the cruise ship. That will help you know how the CDC scores that cruise ship’s sanitary conditions.

Prepare a ditch bag

A ditch bag is a small bag holding the stuff you may need if you have to ditch – ditch your room, ditch the ship, whatever. What goes in your ditch bag? IDs, passports, necessary medications, cash, spare credit card, spare eyeglasses, those kinds of things. Pack a few additional zippered plastic bags – to keep your medications and cell phone dry.

Ideally, the bag should be as small as possible and it’s especially useful if it can be thrown over your shoulder and worn under your life vest.

FYI: most life vests are equipped with a whistle and strobe light, so those are probably not necessary to store in your ditch bag. If you’re worried though, any outdoor equipment store will be able to sell you a strobe light that’s safe for water emergencies and a whistle.

Your in-room safe may not be that safe

So many of the cabin safes are left locked when passenger disembark that just about every crew member knows the bypass code for opening them. Your in-room safe may be fine for everyday items like your address book and tip money, and of course you shouldn’t be traveling with any real valuables that you aren’t wearing continuously. If you are traveling with something valuable, use the ship’s safe instead. There are records of what’s placed into and taken out of that safe.

Stay aware of your surroundings

It can be hard not to let your guard down on vacation, but it’s important to remember that unsavory characters lurk everywhere just like at home.  Sexual assaults, beatings, robberies, and more have and can occur – even on a cruise ship, which is, after all, a small self-contained city with thousands of passengers and crew members. Act as if you are in a city hotel rather than on a safe deserted island.

Watch the alcohol

Sure, you don’t have to drive home, but fights as well as stupid behavior can occur when you consume too much alcohol, as evidenced in 2010 by one passenger releasing the cruise ship anchor while underway.  Other reports of cruise ship brawls are further evidence that too much alcohol and too few security guards simply don’t mix. Gives new meaning to ‘you booze, you cruise, you lose’ doesn’t it?

Have travel insurance

As they are returning home, passengers on the Costa Concordia have told stories of having to jump into the water and swim to shore. Many made their own way to other towns and paid additional money to get back home. See how this disaster may have been made a little easier for the stranded passengers with travel insurance.

Related topics

Will Cruise Travel Insurance Sooth Traveler’s Jangled Nerves?

Will the passengers of the sunken cruise ship ever see their belongings again?

While it’s important for cruise passengers to recognize that the bizarre and heartbreaking tragedy of the Costa Concordia is a truly rare event, that may not ease the fears of people who have a future booking on a cruise, whether it’s operated by Costa Cruises or not.

I have a future booking on Costa Concordia. What are my options?

Under more normal circumstances, if a cruise company has to cancel a departure, they will offer a full refund or an alternative voyage -– typically with some kind of incentive compensation or treats attached to make you feel better. Then, it’s your choice.

This, as you may imagine, is not a normal situation. If you have a future reservation on Costa Concordia, you’ll have to work with the Costa Cruises company. Depending on how far out your voyage is scheduled will likely determine how soon you are contacted by the company.

I have a future booking on any cruise line, Costa Cruises included, and I want to cancel. What are my options?

Some travelers may feel that until they know what went wrong, they don’t want to sail. What are their options for getting their money back?

The typical procedure for cruise trip cancellations are, very broadly: cancel with a certain number of months in advance, pay a cancellation fee, and you’re out. Cancel within a certain number of days or less of departure, or choose not to show, and all your money is lost.

It’s important to remember that most cruises involve costs that are outside the actual cruise ship charges – they also involve airline tickets, hotel reservations, and more.

By default, travel insurance doesn’t provide reimbursement when a traveler changes their mind and as sensational as the news reports are, that’s still what it is – changing your mind about the trip. Travelers with ‘cancel for any reason’ coverage with their policies, however, do have the option to cancel for 50-100% of their trip costs for any reason at all, including changing your mind.

Follow-up Warning: In most cases, travelers must purchase their travel insurance within a certain number of days of making their initial booking to have the ‘cancel for any reason’ option available. See the important notes about ‘cancel for any reason’ coverage.

For reasons not yet fully understood, the cruise ship Costa Concordia struck the rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio and capsized with over 4,000 passengers and crew aboard. At least five people are now known to have died in this tragedy and dozens remain missing.

Travel insurance would give you a ‘lifeline’ to call

While the immediate task of the cruise management company should be to help the survivors, as well as the relatives of the victims, helping that number of people is difficult for even the most well organized team. Travelers with travel insurance have a third-party to call for assistance – and these folks are trained to handle travel emergencies.

Arranging medical care or evacuation

Survivors who regularly take necessary prescriptions could be struggling to find replacements. Those who were injured or suffered hypothermia from the freezing water may be struggling to find medical help and may be facing foreign medical bills. Travel insurance assistance services can locate local medical care providers and even arrange for an evacuation.

Replacing lost passports and credit cards

Survivors of this bizarre tragedy were forced to abandon the ship, in most cases, with little more than the clothing on their backs. If they were lucky, they had a cell phone in their pocket. In the dead of night, these former passengers were virtually stranded in foreign country without their wallets, identification, passports, credit cards, cash, and more. Travel insurance services can help travelers replace their passports, obtain new credit cards, and even advance cash from their own accounts or from family.

Making new travel arrangements

As the survivors have begun returning to their homes, many tell tales of finding their own transportation to other towns, and having to rely on the kindness of strangers for temporary lodging. With travel insurance in their corner, stranded travelers have help finding and paying for alternative flights back home, lodging, and replacement clothing and personal items.

Emergency teams have been called into action to rescue passengers missing after their cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, ran aground off the coast of Italy, near the island of Giglio.

The ship carried approximately 4,000 people, three of whom are now confirmed dead and many (nearly 70) are currently missing. Some of those who are missing may, however, have swum to shore and have not been accounted for yet.

The Costa Concordia sailed from Civitavecchia near Rome on Friday morning. It apparently hit the rocks off Giglio late the first evening of the cruise.

According to current media reports, the ship’s evacuation drill was not scheduled until Saturday afternoon, so passengers were uninformed as to how best to evacuate. Some jumped into the sea after the life boats were delayed.

A few years ago, the cruise ship health news was all about the norovirus, nicknamed the ‘cruise ship virus’. Norovirus is an infection that causes over 20 million cases of gastroenteritis annually in the U.S. alone and for which there is no treatment. In 2011, an experimental norovirus vaccine was developed and studied.

Cruise Ship Sanitation Reports

In the meantime, however, cruise ship travelers have definitive resource to find out how safe their cruise ship may or may not be:  the CDC maintains a Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) to assist the cruise industry on the prevention of the spread of gastrointestinal diseases on their ships. They post the most recent sanitation scores and reports for specific cruise ships on their website.

It operates under the Public Health Service Act and works by:

• inspecting cruise ships periodically and by unannounced inspections
• monitoring gastrointestinal illness outbreaks
• training cruise ship employees on public health practices

Plus, they provide health information regarding the cruise ship industry to the traveling public. For more information, read about the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP).

Research your intended cruise ship’s sanitation scores: enter the cruise ship, the cruise line, and choose the dates for which you want their scores.  In general, the higher the score, the higher the level of sanitation, but this score does not reflect the risk of getting some diseases.  A score of 86 (out of 100) or higher is considered good.

Alternative Cruise Ship Information and Cruise Travel Insurance

Alternatively, you can select the cruise ships with scores of 100 and review their reports.

In addition, the CDC provides updated outbreak information for international cruise ships and public health information for cruise ship travelers.

If you’re planning a cruise trip for 2012, be sure to review your health insurance policy and the coverage area to understand whether you will have health care protection on your trip. Also, remember that Medicare does not provide coverage outside the U.S. borders and if you have to be medically evacuated off the ship to receive medical care, having a travel insurance plan with medical evacuation coverage is a sure way to avoid a very expensive and unexpected bill.