After the earthquake struck Haiti in January, Royal Caribbean quickly resumed calls at its private beach resort on the island's north shore at Labadee. Even though they were getting hammered by the general media at large which tried to paint an inaccurate picture of rich passengers frolicking on the beach with the destruction of the quake a few yards away on the other side of a fence surrounding the property, RCCL stayed the course and continued calls in Haiti because they knew that, as a large employer in Haiti, jobs were exactly what the country needed. In reality, the effects of the quake were many miles away in an area around Port au Prince, and in addition to bringing passengers, Royal Caribbean ships also brought more then 3,000 pallets of relief supplies to Labadee that would be transported to the needy areas in the south of the country.
Cruise lines do a lot of charitable work, especially in their ports of call, and most of it is never noticed by the media or their customers. It comes in cash and goods. Five thousand dollars here for some community project, ten thousand there for a school's new basketball court, five hundred used television sets for charities in another port. And sometimes, something exceptional comes along, and we especially like to highlight those, and RCCL just donated something to the people of Haiti, which will continue giving to them for generations.
The complete article appeared in the October 22, 2010, edition of Cruise News Daily.
