On The Deck: Bill Gibbons director of the PSA
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In two weeks, on 1 May, the Passenger Shipping Association is going to disband and officially become CLIA UK and Ireland. The ferry segment will join the Chamber of Shipping leaving cruise to form part of what is now truly a global body. In the first of two interviews, Cruise News discusses the industry with its key decision makers – both past and future. Part one is with Bill Gibbons, who has been at the helm of the PSA for 19 years. In his role as director he has witnessed many of the changes which have shaped the British cruise industry today. In his final month on the job we caught up with him to find out about the last 19 years and how he thinks the industry fares going forward.
How did the PSA come to form?
In 1958 the bosses of the big ocean liners realised they had serious competition from the jet aeroplane. In that year more people were travelling by sea than flying. Before the jet engine everyone travelled by sea. It was because of that threat that ‘Ocean Travel Development’ (OTD) was formed. By the end of the 1960s all the ocean liners had gone and it was out of that that the cruise industry emerged. Some of those vessels were converted into cruise ships, the most prominent of which was the SS France, which became the biggest cruise ship in the world, the SS Norway. Then in about 1976 the ferries joined and it was renamed the Passenger Shipping Association.
Why was that decision made?
The cruise industry went through a bad patch in the early 70s with the fuel crisis. So they were looking to strengthen the association. They ferries were very much led by the foreign flagged vessels so they couldn’t belong to the Chamber of Shipping, but the PSA was something they could join. From then we held separate cruise and ferry meetings and it’s stayed with that model ever since but with a board that’s made up of cruise and ferry members. In 2004 we started our associate member scheme, which has worked very well. We’ve now got 84 associate members.
And ACE was created in 2006?
ACE was created in 2006 but it had a predecessor called PSARA which was the Passenger Shipping Association Retail Agents Scheme, which was set up in 1987 and modelled on what CLIA was doing in the US. It was felt at the time that travel agents knew very little about the cruise product and it’s been a very successful model. If you take the global industry, there are only two other regions that are doing agent programmes in the same depth that we do and those are North America and Australia.
It sounds like over the last decade there has been a huge amount done to modernise the PSA?
Yes, and we’ve grown river cruise, which has been highly successful. We’ve had two river cruise expos and there will be another in Cologne this year. It’s pioneering stuff: 200-travel agents and six river ships all in one location. You can’t bring the river cruise ships to the UK so we go to Amsterdam or Cologne, which are the real hubs. River cruising has been one of our major success stories. We now have 13 river members and they’ve all joined within the last three years.
What trends have you seen in recent times?
An interesting development I’ve noticed – or a problem I foresee – is within ex-UK cruises and the stringent sulphur regulations in 2015. The cost of fuel will go up hugely and cruising in the English Channel, Baltic and North Sea will all become more expensive. Interestingly the Environmental Control Area (ECA) does not cover the Mediterranean so there will be a huge increase in capacity within that region. While I’m sure it will become an ECA area, it may take business away from the Baltics to begin with.
What has been your greatest challenge while at the PSA?
I couldn’t name the single greatest challenge as there have been a series of them! But, when I started in the business we were actually fighting to save Duty Free. We spent five years campaigning to keep it up until 1999. A lot of the challenges have been global issues like 9/11, which had a huge impact; and Costa Concordia too. Challenges like the press treatment the cruise industry received because of the Norovirus were testing too, but ultimately we have shown that it’s not a condition unique to our business and, together with the International Maritime Organisation, we’ve put the correct safety procedures in place.