If you've ever sailed aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise, a song lurks deep within your subconscious: a kiddie-style earworm about washing your hands that loops endlessly in the buffet entrance and on in-room TVs.
"Wash your hands, like 50 times a day," the tune goes, imploring passengers _ with a cartoon octopus cleaning its multitude of hands _ to do what it takes to avoid a norovirus outbreak, or worse. It's far from the ambient music of a five-star hotel, whose in-room TVs are more likely to feature swells of orchestral strings. But it's what's necessary to keep 6,000-plus passengers from inadvertently fueling a public health fire.
"There's quite a lot of condescension in the (travel) industry about cruises," says Bjorn Hanson, a veteran hospitality researcher and consultant. "In fact, most hotels would say they use the anti-cruise model of hospitality."
Perhaps for the first time, though, hotels and resorts on dry land have to fight microbial infestations with the persistence of a tired cruise director. It's no surprise that as these properties start to reopen following months of COVID-19-related lockdowns, they're turning to that cruise model for ideas on how to keep guests safe.
