Abstract
The purpose of this article is to highlight the power relations between transnational corporations and developing countries due to the application of the Flags of Convenience (FoC) system in the cruise tourism industry. The focus is to answer whether the FoC in global cruise tourism is a good opportunity or actually a system that exploits developing countries. This article uses literature review method by referring to the concept of power of transnational corporations as an analytical framework. This study found that the FoC system strengthens the position of non-state actors in the international system through its regulations and by achieving its business goals through its power over the country, particularly developing countries.
Highlights
Cruise tourism is a part of the rapidly growing global tourism industry
The study on FOC in cruise ship industries and its relations to developing countries based on secondary data that has been collected from several resources, including books, journals, newspapers, and others
Even though cruise tourism as an industry proliferated, the evolution from a mode of transportation to cruising as a vacation has taken a long historical journey. This evolution was represented by some of the early companies in the 1800s, such as Cunard Lines, Peninsula and Oriental Steam Company, and Quaker City (Dickinson & Vladimir, 2007). This development continued to grow with various new companies in later years, including Holland American Line, The Hamburg American Line, White Star Line, Princess Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean
Summary
Cruise tourism is a part of the rapidly growing global tourism industry. Due to the increasingly globalised development of cruise tourism, this industry has been labelled as the icon of globalisation. The representation of globalisation in cruise tourism is comprehensively described by Wood (2006) through the concept of deterritorialisation. Deterritorialisation is a process in which social activities’ organisation is increasingly less constrained by geographical proximity and national territorial boundaries One of the visible manifestations of the global interconnection in the industry is that cruise ships become an interaction arena between passengers, mostly from developed countries, with the workers dominated by people from developing countries. Based on the CLIA report in 2019, cruise ship passengers were dominated by people from the United States, China, Germany, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Italy, Spain, France and Brazil (CLIA, 2019). According to Terry (2017), around 70% of the workforce comes from developing countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central America, The Caribbean and Eastern Europe
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