Death at Sea: Investigative reporters create fake yacht, global booking portal falls for it
Among the booking platforms for diving trips, Liveaboard is one of the market leaders. Now stern reveals: Offering an unsafe ship through this platform is easy – far too easy.
Liveaboard.com, one of the world's largest booking portals for diving cruises, apparently does not check the safety standards of boats it lists. This is reported by stern and RTL. According to the report, a research team offered the company based in Amsterdam a fictitious ship with serious safety deficiencies. Life jackets, fire extinguishers, and an emergency exit were missing. Nevertheless, the team was given a contract to be listed on the website.
The reporters posed as a new provider based in Egypt and built a website with photos and key data of the alleged ship called ‘Star Adventure’. The website clearly showed that fire extinguishers, life jackets, and several other items that could be critical to the survival of crew and passengers in an emergency were missing. As reported by stern and RTL, the reporters went through the application process at Liveaboard.com without the company objecting to the safety deficiencies of the vessel. In addition, the booking platform did not ask for any evidence regarding the ship's safety. Even in a video call, three employees of the company did not ask any questions about safety. Instead, they provided information about their own business model in a presentation. The word 'payment' appeared eight times in the presentation. The word 'safety' did not appear even once.
The reporters confronted Liveaboard.com with the allegations in writing. The company did not respond.
Unprecedented series of accidents in the Red Sea
Cause for the reporters’ investigation is an unprecedented series of accidents involving dive safari ships in the Red Sea. Since 2022, around 30 dive safari ships have sunk worldwide, more than half of them in Egypt. Many of the ship operators affected are or were listed on Liveaboard.com. Survivors and victims of some of the most recent accidents had also booked their trips through the agency, for example guests of the “Sea Story,” which sank in November last year. Media outlets from around the world reported on the case. Among the eleven fatalities were three Germans, two Britons, two Poles, one Slovak, and three Egyptians.
The business model of Liveaboard.com is similar to that of Airbnb or Booking.com. Customers use Liveaboard.com to book multi-day boat trips online, during which the ships visit various diving sites. Liveaboard.com says the company offers 600 boats and sent more than 34,000 guests on over 19,000 trips last year. According to the company, 30 percent of its customers come from Europe.