"An Unforgettable Holiday with Costa" - the crisis lessons begin

"As soon as you step onboard, you will realise what an unforgettable experience your holiday at sea with Costa will be", extolled the Costa Cruises website, nearly 24 hours after 3 people died (at the time) and 40 were still missing in a catastrophe for the Costa Concordia.

There are many lessons to be learned from the Costa Concordia accident, both in crisis communications, and in dealing with passengers involved in an emergency.

"Having a robust crisis plan is not optional" - The Hon Mary Jo Jacobi Jephson

But the overwhelming lesson is that your organisation must be prepared for the unthinkable.   "Where loss of human life or serious injury is a possibility, having a robust crisis plan is not optional", veteran comms doyenne and ex White House staffer Mary Jo Jacobi Jephson has said.  "And where loss of human life or serious injury is a possibility, rehearsing your crisis plan is not optional."

"There are echoes of the Titanic" - Simon Calder

The Simon Calder Travel Show on LBC Radio

As veteran UK travel journalist Simon Calder told BBC News: “It is unbelieveable.  A lot of people in the cruise industry are just astonished that this should happen to a 21st century ship when everything is designed with safety in mind. There must have been an extraordinary sequence of events....the ship was listing dangerously and people were jumping into the water, and I'm sorry to raise this, there are echoes of Titanic which happened a hundred years ago.’

Your crisis plan must work in situations you think will never happen.

For Costa Cruises and its parent company Carnival, it seemed that even the things that could be planned for hadn’t been enacted.  24 hours after the accident it still appeared possible to book a cruise on the Concordia on the Costa Cruises site, with a cruise the following week round the Balaeric Islands being offered at less than half price.  The  front page of the Carnival Cruises (Costa’ parent company) website was still extolling “Look what the carnival breeze blew in” a day later with a tiny link to a statement about the tragedy at the top left of the page.

The pages were changed later.

So, an easy lesson.  Make sure that your organisation's website can be suspended in the event of a tragedy.  Prepare "vanilla" pages that can quickly be populated with information about what is happening and are right in tone.  When a ship with 4,000 passengers falls over, it's time to show that your priority is those who are affected.

After any accident, of course, there must be business continuity in the rest of the business.  But care, compassion and taste come first - always.

But it does require you to have a robust plan.  Involve your web and social media teams in every rehearsal - no exceptions.

It also helps not to have a public row with the Captain of a lost ship about culpability in public.  It can sound like you're trying to say "it wasn't our fault".  At best, extremely unattractive.   But more of that another day.

(Posted from London)