The cruise industry is an environmentally criminal enterprise that systematically redistributes upward the income generated by tourism from the middle and bottom. Carnival and Royal Caribbean are cartels that operate the shopping areas near the docks where the passengers come off the ships. They're like company stores in 19th century mining towns, blackmailing the Caribbean governments who think their tourism industries can't live without the cruise lines, even though yacht charter spends more money locally and spreads it around more.

For nearly 20 years my company did photography and brochures for tourist boards, hotels, tour and safari operators in 21 countries in the Caribbean, East Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterrenean and South America. Our clients included tourist board directors and hotels in Turks and Caicos, Anguilla, Montserrat, the Netherlands Antilles, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados and Kenya. They all hated the cruise industry and the corruption their countries imported from it. Nobody with an ounce of conscience should go near a cruise.

The cruise industry is the tourism equivalent of Royal Dutch Shell and Total plundering Nigeria.