Royal Caribbean Adds Haiti Relief News to Updated Home Page

Royal Caribbean’s updated home page now spotlights the humanitarian relief the company is providing to Haiti.

A few days ago in this space, we faulted Royal Caribbean’s silence on Haiti on its homepage – even as the company was actively supporting the relief efforts.

As anyone who has cruised the Caribbean with RC knows, the company operates a private beach for its passengers in Haiti, giving it a special association with that country. The lack of any reference to Haiti’s plight on the company’s homepage was an omission that, in our view, seemed not only cold but left people with the false impression that RC was not responding to the crisis

Royal Caribbean has since remedied this, and has placed a prominent link to information about its relief efforts in its opening photo carousel.

The larger lesson for communicators is this: If your organization is doing something to help Haiti, you should make it easy for your customers and stakeholders to find out – not because you’re a publicity hound, but because people might think you’re doing nothing if they don’t quickly see evidence to the contrary.

A Tree Fell in the Forest: Royal Caribbean's Communications on Haiti

Royal Caribbean has a port-of-call in Haiti and is doing a number of things to help in the earthquake relief effort. But you’d never know that from the company’s homepage.  As of Friday afternoon it was still all blue skies and good times as far as the eye could see.

To people who know the company’s connection to Haiti, the absence of any acknowledgment of the catastrophe on the home page – the company’s doorstep to the world – sends a chill.

Perception matters.

If you’re an organization that’s doing something to help Haiti, you should make it easy for your customers and stakeholders to find out – not because you’re a publicity hound, but because people might think you’re doing nothing if they don’t quickly see evidence to the contrary.

Royal Caribbean issued a press release Friday afternoon outlining its humanitarian response, and it’s substantial. It includes a pledge of at least $1 million in relief and deliveries of goods and supplies.

To get the news, however, you had to visit the Press Center, a Web site backwater for journalists and PR types.

Fail.

There was also some interesting information about the relief response in Royal Caribbean CEO’s Adam Goldstein’s blog, called WHY NOT? This blog is clearly linked from the company’s home page, but gives no indication that it’s a place for news on Haiti.

Fail.

In social media, the company’s Twitter site spouts only blurbs about the latest screamin’ deals, while its YouTube site airs commercials.

Fail.

The company’s facebook fan page carries the CEO’s blog posts. Again, some good stuff about Haiti, but nothing on the home page to indicate you’ll find it there.

My family and I, and many thousands of others, stepped on the soil of Haiti thanks to a Royal Caribbean cruise.   It wasn’t exactly a cultural immersion. Port-of-call Labadee is a self-contained, private enclave for cruise ship passengers.

Still, as someone who had that experience –  and who thinks highly of Royal Caribbean –  I went to their Web site eager to see what the company was doing in response to the earthquake.

I saw nothing.

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons.