Hurricane season in the Atlantic began this week and every year cruise passengers worry about how a hurricane could impact their cruise.  While there's the possibility that your itinerary may change, Royal Caribbean head Captain Bill Wright urges passengers not to worry.

"Keep in mind that hurricanes or storms are travelling at about six to 12 knots and today's modern ship cruises over 20 knots," he says.

"In a worst-case scenario, we can outrun the storm, although we very rarely have to do that. As soon as we see a storm could affect our routing or home port, we move into the situation room with the president and all the teams, as do all the major cruise lines.

"Here we determine whether we may have to skip a port, continue as usual or exchange a Western Caribbean cruise for an Eastern Caribbean cruise. Once this happens, it gets to be a bit of competition among the lines to see who can set up the new schedule the fastest, ensuring the best berth in the new ports."

Those are for en-route ports, but what happens if a hurricane's heading to your home port? Wright explains: "This probably is the most difficult time, as we have to worry about all passengers on the ship, plus those waiting for the ship. For example, if Fort Lauderdale is our base, we may have to move to Port Canaveral or stay an extra day at sea, necessitating a massive re-deployment of our passengers."

What about rough seas on the edge of the storms?

"Today's ships are computerstabilized, making us able to cope much better than we could some years ago," he says.

"The technology really showed us what it could do when we were ferrying Oasis of the Seas across the Atlantic with just crew and workers on board finishing the interior. We hit some major weather but (everyone) kept working through the storm."

iAfrica.com listed a top 10 list of the latest and greatest innovations at sea and not surprisingly, Royal Caribbean's innovations made a lot of the list.

• Size: The largest cruise ships ever constructed are now on active routes throughout the world including Royal Caribbean International’s world record holder, Allure of the Seas, a 1187ft behemoth capable of carrying more than 6000 passengers.
• Next-Gen Cinemas: With Hollywood’s latest blockbusters now being presented in 3D, cruise ship operators including Royal Caribbean have revamped onboard cinemas to deliver a seamless 3D experience.
• High-tech fun: Royal Caribbean passengers can show off their surfing skills at the Flowrider, a purpose built, man-made wave on its Oasis and Freedom class vessels.
• Onboard Shows: Licensed works of Andrew Lloyd Webber and critically acclaimed productions of Hairspray and Chicago have featured on P&O and Royal Caribbean liners.

Dates for the Beatles Tribute Cruise 2012 have been announced.  The cruise will be on Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas February 4-11, 2012.

The cruise will feature Beatles tribute band, "Revolution" and the date of the cruise is no coincidence.  It's set to coincide with the 48th Anniversary of The Beatles first U.S. Television appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show back in 1964.

The cruise will also feature special guests

• LJ Juber (Wings band member)
• Mark Hudson (Producer for Ringo Starr)
• Tony Bramwell (Author of Beatles books)
• Tim Piper (John Lennon impressionist)
• Joe Johnson (Emcee)

The Telegraph listed the top 50 cruise excursions that "you would struggle to do alone or which could be difficult or expensive to organize".  Three from the list are offered by Royal Caribbean.

19. Horseback ride and swim, Jamaica
The fun starts after a rather tame ride, when you change into a swimming costume and remount the horse, now bareback, for the swim. The horses really do swim; you have to hang on to stop floating away. £68 for three and a half hours.

20. Amazing secret river, Cozumel
Join a guide for an exploration of a subterranean world filled with stalactites and stalagmites. You'll walk, wade or swim around the 600-metre route. £62 for eight hours. Minimum age six. 

46. Elephant safari ride, Bali
You'll be taken to the Elephant Safari Park at Taro for a ride through the forest on one of these gentle giants. The tour ends with a splash at the park's bathing lake. £84 for about seven and a half hours. 

Royal Caribbean Adam Goldstein outlined some new details about the new class of Royal Caribbean ships that is on order in a recent blog entry.  While Goldstein can't divulge details about the ship quite yet, he did clue us into the process they are engaged in that will bring Royal Caribbean its next new ships in about 3 years.

Royal Caribbean has a department that specializes in these new ship designs called "Fleet Design & Newbuild", although Goldstein notes that is more commonly referred to as simply "Newbuild".  Newbuild is also involved in ship upgrades, such as the one that is going on right now for Radiance of the Seas.

The new Project Sunshine class ship design is being headed up by Executive VP Harri Kulovaara and chief designer Kelly Gonzalez.

The design process involves the Operations, Marketing and Executive Steering committee divisions of Royal Caribbean.  The Executive Steering committee is made up of Adam Goldstein, Royal Caribbean Chairman Richard Fain and Harri Kulovaara.  They meet once a month for a day to go over "critical aspects of the project".  The executive steering  committee normally meet in Miami, but for the May meeting, they flew out to Germany to the Meyerwerft shipyard for a meeting there.

Goldstein reiterated that Project Sunshine should be ready sometime in 2014.

The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine has been at the forefront of the field of telehealth solutions for many years.  They've been working on improving remote health screenings with the use of technology since the 1990s and they've been a partner with Royal Caribbean to help keep the Royal Caribbean work force healthy.

Royal Caribbean receives remote dermatology consultations from the University of Miami for consultations of its employees while they are on the cruise ships,  in both real time and with store-and-forward technology. Scott Simmons, director of telehealth for the University of Miami is excited about the possibilities,  “Dermatology is one that works really well with store-and-forward".

Royal Caribbean's ships have consumer-grade digital cameras along with encrypted software to ensure privacy and security for the patients.  To make this all work, the ships need Internet bandwidth of 384 kbps to 512 kbps to make the link between the ship and the university facility work correctly.  

With satellite internet onboard cruise ships already a costly and slow affair, Simmons thinks there's better tech coming to help, “The software-based videoconferencing systems are getting better".

During last week’s World Travel Market Vision conference in London, Royal Caribbean’s UK and Ireland managing director Dominic Paul denied the notion floating around these days that cruises in the feature will focus on slower voyages with fewer port calls.

“There’s been a feeling that with the high cost of fuel, cruise ships will have to call at fewer ports.  But when we speak to customers they are focused on itineraries – they are interested in visiting different and new places."

Paul's statement comes after Carnival Cruise UK chief executive David Dingle at the Cannes Seatrade Med conference in December claimed that cruises in the future would need to slow down in part due to new environmental protection laws.

Paul insisted ports of call were too important to Royal Caribbean customers for the line to reduce them,“You can build a ship that’s a destination in itself, but the opportunity to visit lots of different destinations in one holiday is a big selling point of a cruise. That’s what customers want – we would be nuts to start moving away from that model".

On Wednesday morning, representatives from Royal Caribbean met with officials from the Brazilian state of Alagoas to discuss a possible cruise terminal in the state capital.

The visit aimed to examine the possibility of sending Royal Caribbean ships to Alagoas, and consider the application of investment for building a passenger terminal.

According to Danielle Novis, Secretary of State for Tourism, Royal Caribbean does work with the authorities, public and private, to promote the port infrastructure for the development of tourism in several states.

Also according to Danielle Novis, other visits will be scheduled. "Royal Caribbean is one of the largest cruise ship in the world, Brazil has two operating cruises in the Northeast and only Savior receives this demand. Our goal is to create a route to enter and exit through the Northeast, so we will continue growing the state, "says Danielle.

In August, representatives from Royal Caribbean and the Secretaries of Tourism will hold a tour of the Northeast at all ports of the region to expand the route of the cruise company's northeastern coast.

During the visit, were present: Secretary of State for Tourism, Danielle Novis, Municipal Tourism Secretary of Maceio, Cláudia Pessoa, superintendent of Investment Setur-AL, Mark Pradines, representatives from the Port of Miami, Domitius Silva and Roberto Leoni, and director and product manager of port operations for Royal Caribbean, Diego Dantas and vice president of Royal Caribbean, John Tercek.

Royal Caribbean will be taking part in the Posidonia Sea Tourism Forum, scheduled to take place 21-22 June 2011 at the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens.  In preparation for the event, Royal Caribbean's Senior Vice President Craig Milan spoke a little about the company's view on the Eastern Mediterannean region.

“The Eastern Mediterranean has become increasingly popular for all three of RCI’s brands, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and Azamara, prior to the political upheaval in many of the countries of North Africa this year, and we had been shifting more capacity to the region. However, these events have impacted on the demand for all sailings in the East Mediterranean, not only those which had scheduled calls in Egypt. We are hopeful that the demand improves as we move into 2012 and as such, we did not proceed with any changes in our planning for the next season. Looking towards the future, we have seen opportunity to develop some of the newer and smaller ports to enhance our itineraries in this area, especially in connection with the overcrowding that we are experiencing in Santorini and Mykonos. "

"The Black Sea is also interesting and we see opportunities for growth. Azamara at present has a limited number of sailings which are doing well. We would like to add some sailings for Royal and or Celebrity for 2013.”

Royal Caribbean Vice President John Tercek also commented by adding, "As we move forward, we are also keen to develop source markets for our products, with Greece and Turkey playing a leading role as operational hubs”.