With Carnival's Construction of Another Artificial Village in the Dominican Republic, Cruising Has Become Less Like Travel

It's become quite obvious that the cruiselines are hell-bent to hold on to every penny of their passengers' expenditures at the various ports on their cruise. The latest step in doing that is the announcement by Carnival Cruises that it is financing the construction of another of those phony port cities in the Caribbean, this time on the coast of the Dominican Republic just west of Puerto Plata. The new cruise facility, they say, will have retail shops, bars and restaurants, and entertainment buildings of an unspecified nature.

So, instead of going to dine in a restaurant owned and operated by citizens of the Dominican Republic, passengers will dine in a restaurant owned and operated by Carnival. Instead of shopping in local stores, they will shop in retail outlets owned by Carnival and staffed by employees of Carnival. Same for various activities of entertainment.

The new village, on Maimon Bay, is the latest in a large and growing string of phony towns and villages that several cruiselines have now constructed and are operating throughout the Caribbean. Each of these is brand new and without the vestiges of age and authenticity found in real towns and villages of the Caribbean. As a sop to those passengers who are eager to see the rest of the island, there are transportation hubs in each such location housing large motorcoaches that can conduct groups on sightseeing tours, intervals when passengers stare through the windows of the bus at the island life flashing by.

We are fast approaching the point when a great many cruises are simply floating amusement parks and shopping centers, totally divorced from the activity of travel and supplying their passengers with no semblance of a foreign travel experience. There should be a new name coined for these cruises, a term that would distinguish them from the small remaining number of cruises that actually transport their passengers to unaltered communities of the world. Suggest your ideas for such a word in the comments below.