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Bureau Veritas and Carnival collaborate to make cruising safer

Bureau Veritas and Carnival collaborate to make cruising safer

Apr. 26 2022 - 4 min

The cruise sector was undoubtedly one of the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. As the world’s largest leisure travel company, Carnival Corporation & PLC had to quickly implement health and safety protocols. This was essential to protect passengers and crews and make cruising a safe way to travel. We spoke with William Burke, Carnival’s Chief Maritime Officer, about working with Bureau Veritas to keep passengers and crews safe.

How did you approach the COVID-19 situation?

We were quick to react at the outbreak, focusing on getting passengers and crew ashore safely. Working with the health authorities, we implemented isolation and quarantine measures to restrict the spread of the virus. We then collaborated with medical experts to develop appropriate health and safety protocols. Once vaccines were produced, our priority was to make them available to our crews to ensure their safety.

Why is health and safety so important to Carnival?

In our vision statement, we outline our top priorities. For us, those are compliance, environmental protection and health, safety and well-being of our guests, the people in the communities we touch and serve, and our shipboard and shoreside employees. With this in mind, we are committed to ensuring both our guests and our crews feel happy, and most importantly, safe. We aim to provide optimal conditions on board, giving passengers peace of mind.

How has Bureau Veritas supported you throughout the pandemic?

With protocols already in place, we called upon Bureau Veritas to ensure their proper implementation. Operating across the world, we were governed by a number of different local health regulations. Bureau Veritas assisted us with ensuring the compliance of our protocols in different locations. It then verified that these protocols were correctly and consistently implemented across our fleet. Bureau Veritas helped us adapt to feedback from the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and evaluated nearly all of our fleet.

Why did you choose to partner with Bureau Veritas?

We knew a class society with knowledge of cruise ship operation would make an excellent partner. Having previously worked together, we were confident Bureau Veritas would provide the expertise we needed. With its commitment to shaping a better maritime world, Bureau Veritas has a 360° vision of the industry. We can rely on its teams to help us achieve compliance and make performance and efficiency improvements to meet regulatory requirements and sustainability goals.

What does the future of cruising look like for Carnival?

We’re delighted to see an uptake in bookings, showing that customers’ confidence in cruising is restored. We hope to exceed our pre-pandemic 2019 passenger levels.

Carnival is also committed to sustainability. Firstly, we are improving the efficiency of our ships and working with our supplier partners to reduce our carbon footprint. Our absolute carbon emissions peaked in 2011 despite a 25% capacity increase. Our second priority is optimizing waste streams. For example, we reduced food waste by 26% between 2019 and 2021, and we are committed to phasing out single-use plastics. Sustainability and environmental compliance are important for the future of cruising.

Pioneers in safety and performance, Bureau Veritas is committed to supporting our partners like Carnival to help make the cruise industry safer and more sustainable. Through our Restart Your Business suite of solutions and NI673 Guidelines for the management of COVID-19 and infectious diseases, we are helping our clients successfully navigate the post-pandemic landscape.