Note from Art: this intrepid reporter has spared no effort to observe at least three or four news reports on this topic. And note to executives and managers everywhere: get your act together on assessing, planning for and responding to customer catastrophes!

By now, most of us have seen or heard news footage of the Carnival Splendor stranded at sea after suffering an engine room fire and a subsequent loss of core systems including most power and importantly, the plumbing. Thankfully, no one was reported injured, but that’s about as good as the news gets in this situation.

The fact that something went wrong at sea on one of those floating Mall of Americas is not surprising to me. Thanks to my wife, I’m a veteran of a good number of these trips, and I’ve increasingly found myself looking beyond the surface trappings of the experience and wondering just what might go wrong. It’s a lot like making a mental note of where the fire exit is on your hotel floor, except the conclusion here is that if something bad happens, there’s no ground floor escape option.

What is surprising and disconcerting about the situation, is the apparent complete and utter lack of a risk response plan by the company that is in business to float people around on these palaces and feed them until they can barely waddle off the gangplank.

From the chronology indicated by the Carnival, it appears that fire took place in at 6:00 a.m. on Monday, with a subsequent loss of power and plumbing. The information indicates that by 8:15 p.m. that evening, toilet service was restored, as was cold running water. While I wasn’t a math or biology major, let’s look at the variables in this situation:

  • 6:00 a.m. fire and plumbing failure
  • 3,300 passengers well fed from the day before
  • No bathroom service for 14 hours

Here’s hoping that the risk response plan included something really creative for this particular human issue.

Beyond the biological challenges, the Cruise Line required airlifting of Spam (the food, not the e-mail kind) by the U.S. Navy to feed the passengers and crew. Right about now, your olfactory senses should be battling with your gut to contemplate the smells on board this sweltering sweatbox sans air conditioning and plumbing, as well as the sight of sweaty meat or a meat-like substance being served in the sun.

Last and not least, one gets the impression that there was no clear idea on how to move the becalmed vessel from its stranded location to something resembling civilization. For a great while the ship just sat there while it appears that company officials scrambled for someone, anyone that could help them rescue their passengers from this Gilligan’s Island debacle.

What Part of the Risk Management Plan Didn’t Consider This Situation?

Much like we are hearing finally from BP (or at least its former CEO), it appears the oil company was not prepared for the calamity it faced at the Deepwater Horizon.  We certainly are to be forgiven if we raise an eyebrow at Carnival’s response to their own Deepwater debacle and conclude that these people didn’t have a clue and a plan to deal with something as fundamental as a ship getting stranded.

The Bottom Line for Now:

There’s no doubt it’ a non-trivial task to deal with a floating object two times as large as Titanic with thousands of people aboard. However, given the nature of the firm’s business (entertainment, fantasy) it is reasonable to expect lightening fast effective response to a problem of this magnitude. To those of us viewing this via the media, the clueless and seemingly uncoordinated response seems all too familiar. We’ve seen this movie before and the ending sucks.

Are you prepared in your firm to respond effectively to catastrophes with your customers? You may be in the entertainment business, Carnival, but this is not the type of entertainment that will help your cause.