A Study on the Protection of the Cruise Passengers’ Rights and Proposals for Cruise Legislation

The cruise tourism is now one of the fastest-growing and the most development potential industries in the world, both Korea and China are with huge potencies in the industry. But due to the complexity of the cruise contract, without the specific legal relations, the cruise passengers are more likely to involved in the dispute, while the cruise passengers’ rights are hard to be protected, the increasing cruise disputes may seriously affect the development of the industry. Therefore, the effective legislation is needed to regulate the industry order and to promote the industry progress. Nowadays, United States is the biggest cruise tourist generating region with a comparatively perfect cruise legal system, similarly, European Union as an inter-governmental organization also has the thorough legislation. By contrast, Korea and China still do not have effective cruise laws or regulations but also with flourishing cruise industry, the current cruise regulations in these two countries could not effectively solve the cruise disputes and protect the passengers’ rights. In China, although the compensation of accident "Eastern Star" was claimed with the common compensation system, problems also brought out for the lack of specialized cruise legislation. On this basis, the paper analyzed the current cruise contracts and their clauses for rights' protection, and introduced the current cruise legislation systems in United States and European Unions. Refer to the advanced experiences and through the analysis of the case “Eastern Star,” the paper hope to find problems and to give legislative proposals to Korea and China, aim to finding ways for the better solution of the cruise disputes and to promote the development of the cruise industry.