Legal Research On The Liability Insurance Of Cruise Operator

With the rise of cruise tourism in China, a lot of foreign cruise companies enter into the Chinese market. A growing number of Chinese mainland residents choose cruises as an entertainment way for holiday. Cruise products operated independently by Chinese companies also begin to emerge. While generating substantial economic returns and greatly enriching entertainment life of the mainland people, cruise tourism did put cruise operator at tremendous liability risk. China has a huge tourism consumption market. Compared with the growing demands of consumer, the cruise industry in China is so not matured to match up and the related legal and policy systems couldn’t follow up either. The function of insurance for guaranteeing shipping should be highlighted. Cruise operator, compared with the traditional ship owners or managers, should take more public responsibility and be involved in more public policy. But now China’s shipping insurance especially specific for cruise business liability insurance products is still a blank.On the premise of full investigation, this paper takes various methodologies of legal research, including the comparative law approach, the logic analysis approach and the semantic analysis approach.In content, at the beginning of the paper, to distinguish with the traditional carrier of passengers and tour operator, it analyzes and defines the character and responsibility of the cruise operator under the present legal system. Then, with the introduction of the existing liability insurance products owned by cruise operators on the market, it concludes that it cannot cope with cruise operator with a huge liability risk. The liability insurance of the shipping management is always the emphasis of marine insurance research. Under the trend of increasingly heavier liability required for cruise operator in the international conventions and the legislative requirements, compulsory liability insurance and captive insurance company are provided at the end of the paper, and the corresponding system design proposal, in order to help releasing risks on the cruise tourism market and contribute to promote the sound development of cruise industry in China.