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The
Care Team
is a special Costa emergency response
unit. It is staffed by 180 shoreside operatives and 850
shipboard personnel. In 2015 the team handled 1700
individual cases involving medical transport, deaths due
to natural causes and other individual crises. In August
2015 the
Crew Care Team
also started operating,
providing assistance to individual crew members, and
had handled a total of 287 cases by the end of the year
12
.
The rapid response of the Costa Care Team proved vitally
important when it came to assisting 160 of the guests
traveling on the
Costa Fascinosa
who were targeted
in the terrorist attack at the
Bardo Museum in Tunis
on
March 18, 2015, in which five guests tragically lost their
lives and another 8 were injured.
The team, consisting of shipboard and shoreside
employees, arrived on the scene only a matter of hours
after the attack together with the Costa management,
psychologists and doctors, and they stayed with
the families of the people involved until they were
repatriated. Those guests who decided to continue on the
cruise received group and individual counseling on board.
Those who opted to return home early were repatriated
and accompanied by Care Team members until arrival
in their home countries. Costa Cruises also offered all
the guests affected the chance to continue to receive
psychological support from a network of accredited
counselors during the period following the cruise.
Costa Care Team
in the front line
Safety is vital when you are planning a shore excursion.
For Costa Cruises, safety means not only safeguarding the
Guests but also offering them the same standard of quality
and attention to detail that is found on board the ships. The
more than 2400 Costa shore tours included in the brochure
are arranged together with local tour operators so as to
ensure compliance both with the regulations in force in the
country concerned and with the strict rules enforced by our
Company. These standards are tested by the
Destination
Management
Department and by staff on board working
for the
Tour Managers
, from 6 to 11 people depending on
the size of the ship. Any problems arising are dealt with at
once thanks to corrective actions agreed on in the planning
stage with the tour operator.
Among the specific inspections carried out, by way of
example, shipboard hotel personnel check the restaurants
that are included on the tours, while technical staff inspect
the coaches and other means of transport used ashore.
Every effort is made to keep to schedule, thus avoiding any
possible risk of missing the ship, and to provide the best
possible shoreside assistance so as to coordinate the flow of
Guests returning on board. Costa has systems for continuous
tracking of its tour buses and groups, to check compliance
with shore tour program specifications and times.
Safety first on shore tours
12
93% of these were medical transport cases.