The Covid pandemic forced the cruise industry to rethink a lot of things. Those may have been dark days, but the misery led to some pretty amazing innovations.
Royal Caribbean, for example, put a lot of thought into crowd movement and limiting crowded spaces. That was essential for Covid mitigation but it also benefits the cruise industry when it comes to all airborne illnesses.
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That led to innovations like the cruise line's new Destination Elevators. A passenger presses a touchpad to pick the floor they are going to, and they then are notified which elevator (by letter) to wait by.
The setup limits crowds waiting for elevators and in the elevators themselves. And for the cruise line it's easier to clean the touchpads than it is to clean the button panels in classic elevators.
Basically, the cruise line wants to limit passengers' contact with surfaces because every time someone touches a surface and it's not cleaned before someone else does, illness can be spread.
Royal Caribbean has applied that logic to the free-drink dispensers on some of its newer ships. It's an innovative solution that limits touch in an area where the cruise line found it impossible to keep up with the pace of cleaning needed.
Image source: Daniel Kline/ComeCruiseWith.com
Royal Caribbean's new beverage tech
Royal Caribbean offers coffee, hot water, iced tea and a selection of juice-flavored beverages in a variety of places on its ships. Those include the Windjammer Marketplace buffet, Cafe Promenade and other locations.
On older ships. passengers take a glass, place it under a spout, and either pull a lever or push a button to dispense the drink. In high-volume areas, it's hard to imagine that the cruise line manages to wipe down the button or lever after every passenger.
With the new system, a passenger places a glass or mug under the dispenser and waves a hand near the sensor. It takes a few tries to figure it out and the motion is a bit sensitive, but once you figure it out, you can dispense your beverage without touching anything.
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Royal Caribbean offers only a limited selection of self-serve free drinks. People who have a beverage package get access to a Coca-Cola Freestyle machine. Those machines require a lot of button pushing and so are vulnerable to being sources of viral spread.
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If a passenger wants to limit how many people have touched a surface, they can stick to the new machines for free drinks and order sodas from bartenders. The Freestyle machines are wiped down often, but they are also heavily used.
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