By Virginia López Valiente
Managing Director of Cruises News Media Group and Editor of CruisesNews magazine
Editorial from CruisesNews magazine no. 39 – December 2016
Writing an editorial in December 2016 usually involves talking about how well or badly the year has gone and how promising the next one will be.
I don't like to dwell on the past; I prefer to wish everyone a magnificent 2017, both personally and professionally, of course. But we've reached a point where having a job is considered lucky, and well, we're certainly not going to let anything take away from us!.
In these times when having a job isn't synonymous with making ends meet or paying the mortgage, it's also worth remembering that in this sector, the cruise industry, some of us were there when things started to go wrong, when things were going very, very badly for some. Those were tough times for almost everyone, some personally and some professionally, some with jobs, some without, but we stuck together and defended what was ours.
Now that things are starting to go well, albeit differently, the support systems are being forgotten, and parameters that didn't matter before, when our own mouthpieces were being used, are being analyzed. The sector has a bad memory, a very bad memory.
This magazine, the only cruise industry magazine in the Spanish market—a magazine in the classic sense of the word—continues to exist because a few, very few indeed, support it. Yes, I'm talking about financial support; what else would it need? But this magazine keeps going thanks to the personal commitment of those who have decided to ensure its survival, myself included, refusing to let economic factors and profitability alone determine its fate. Because we believe that knowledge and dissemination of information about the sector promotes it as much as, or even more than, a good or bad advertising campaign, we present to you issue 39 of Cruises News.
Having said what I had to say, I can express my deepest gratitude to all those who have decided to join us in this and the other projects we have underway.
And now the near future: the 10 ships we will see launched, the new markets and destinations that will emerge, the increase in the number of people who will choose to try a cruise, and at my house the tenth anniversary of the Excellence Cruise Awards, new forums, some international, our new river publication TOP RIVER and the communication agency UVIA and the INTERNATIONAL CRUISE SUMMIT in November, the one that some didn't see but that has changed the cruise event calendar worldwide.
