If you love travel and enjoy looking at the beautiful pictures of far flung places then you are bound to notice that they often lack authenticity and diversity. You don’t get a true representation of people of all shapes and sizes or people, for instance, in wheel chairs.
There is so often a deliberate attempt to gloss over the reality of life and put a Disney coating over what we get to see. When it comes to choosing imagery on our sites we strive to show diversity in fact we got out of our way to be inclusive in every way we can on my sites: Women Love Tech and The Carousel.
We also like to call out companies that are making it a strategic part of their direction to that too.
Celebrity Cruises is launching a bold new initiative to change the meaning of “all-inclusive” in the travel industry. Creating a diversity-focused open-source image library for other travel companies to access, the ‘All-Inclusive Photo Project’ expands the diversity and inclusion journey throughout the travel industry.
Recognising the need to improve the representation of all people who travel in marketing materials, the new-luxury cruise line has created both a new campaign and the world’s first free to use, ‘open source’ travel image library. The campaign and collection – ‘The All-Inclusive Photo Project’ (AIPP) – aims to start a movement, calling on travel companies to help address the lack of diversity in travel marketing imagery.
The stunning new images features the work of acclaimed photographers including: Annie Leibovitz; Giles Duley, an English documentary photographer and a triple amputee; Naima Green, a Black, queer New York-based photographer; and Jarrad Seng, an Australia-based photographer, filmmaker and creative director of Malaysian-Chinese descent.
The collection includes models, musicians, athletes, artists, advocates and activists, refugees and more, all change-makers in their own right from underrepresented groups, as they enjoy the varied offerings on Celebrity’s ships and within the destinations visited.
Celebrity Cruises will make dozens of the images available via an open-source online library for other travel brands and companies to use to help kickstart their journeys towards more inclusive travel marketing.
“For far too long, ‘all-inclusive’ in the travel industry has meant everything on your vacation is included in one price. We set out to challenge this conventional thinking by imagining the phrase through the lens of others,” said Celebrity Cruises President and CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo. “What Annie and all of the talented artists involved in this project have captured so beautifully, is that for vacations to really live up to the marketing moniker ‘all-inclusive,’ then they should start by using images that are inclusive of all, not just a few.”
“We want our marketing to represent how the world looks, and what we experience on our ships daily, as guests and crew from all walks of life work and play together to create a really special onboard environment.”
“As global brands, we have a powerful platform to act as a catalyst of positive change. We know we have more work to do and we hope we inspire others to join us on this important journey. By leveraging our collective travel industry might, we can begin to make travel marketing truly ‘all-inclusive,” said Michael Scheiner, Celebrity Cruises’ Chief Marketing Officer.
Framed through the lenses of Leibovitz and the other AIPP photographers, the images feature the change-makers experiencing the wonder of travel and include:
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz
- Jillian Mercado, a professional model in the fashion industry with muscular dystrophy, enjoying a new culinary experience on a Celebrity ship;
- John Forté, a recording artist who rose to stardom with multi-platinum hip-hop group The Fugees and now works with at-risk youth to deter them from drugs and crime, making memories with his family on their first cruise ship sailing together;
- Abby Chava Stein, the first openly transgender woman raised in an Hasidic community and a direct descendant of Hasidic Judaism’s founder, the Baal Shem Tov, basking in the sunlight on the Resort Deck of a Celebrity Cruises ship;
Photographed by Giles Duley
- Amy Conroy, pictured playing volleyball on the beaches of Spain, who was diagnosed with cancer at age 12, and, after a year of chemotherapy and a leg amputation, went on to be play Wheelchair Basketball for Great Britain as a three-time Paralympian, U25 World Champion and MVP, and Senior World and European Silver Medalist.
Photographed by Naima Green
- Micah Ramos, a Filipino, non-binary model who loves being a catalyst for individuality, shown enjoying vacation time on a Caribbean island;
Photographed by Jarrad Seng
- Esther Onek, a social worker, advocate and refugee from the South Sudan, who made her way to Australia in 2003, depicted enjoying the beaches of Margaret River in western Australia.
Celebrity Cruises will launch the AIPP collection as a dedicated brand advertising campaign in early April.
It follows a global advertising campaign the brand introduced last September, called “Journey WonderFULL,” marking a distinctive and bold new approach for the new-luxury travel brand and the first major step to advance diversity and inclusivity in its own travel marketing with a wide range of diverse travellers depicted.
With a penchant for rising above the norms, Celebrity Cruises has long been an industry catalyst for change with barrier-breaking initiatives including: an intentional effort that began in 2015 to attract more women to the maritime industry, where only 2% of mariners are female, that led to the appointment of the first American female captain, Kate McCue; the first West African woman to work on the bridge of a cruise ship; the 2020 history-making all-female Bridge and Leadership team sailing; and the recent announcement that 32% of the brand’s Bridge officers are now women; embracing same-sex marriages at sea and conducting the largest, annual Pride Party at sea; and, the first cruise line to eliminate 90 per cent of single-use plastics across its fleet.
For more information on the photographers and talent featured in the AIPP campaign, visit www.celebritycruises.com/PhotoProject.
Travel brands and companies interested in accessing the AIPP library, which Celebrity Cruises will continue to add images to overtime, should visit https://allinclusivephotoproject.com.
