Grumbo
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Oct. 27, 2004. 06:26 AM
Toronto Star
Ahoy, seniors: Take a cruise into retirement
ELAINE CAREY
MEDICAL REPORTER
You step out of your retirement-home room to see a vista of palm-tree-lined beaches and island mountaintops, and savour the tang of the sea air.
Later, there's a midnight buffet. And maybe a movie.
Is this retirement or life on a cruise ship? It's both.
Living on board ship is a feasible option for seniors, costs about the same as a room in a traditional retirement home and is infinitely more attractive, according to a study in today's issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society.
Cruise ships could easily become floating retirement homes for seniors who still have their mental faculties but need some help with daily living activities, the study says. They offer three meals a day with escorts to the dining room, doctors and nurses on board, housekeeping and laundry services and probably far better nightly entertainment.
"It's better than being sent off on an ice floe," said Lee Lindquist, the study's author and a geriatric physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and an instructor of medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. And with all those aging baby boomers on the horizon, it could be the ideal solution, since there won't be enough homes to house them.
"You could have pockets of old people on a cruise so they could have interaction with people of all ages," she said in an interview.
Lindquist compared the costs over a 20-year life expectancy of moving to an assisted living facility (similar to Canadian retirement homes) and a cruise ship.
She found the net cost of 20 years of cruise ship living was only about $2,440 (Canadian) more on the cruise ship ($282,000 versus $279,560), but the quality was higher.
In Ontario, retirement homes, which are not subsidized, range from about $1,500 to $5,000 per month for a private room, including a range of optional services such as meal plans, according to the provincial government. The cruise worked out to an average of $3,186 a month.
Lindquist used a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Majesty of the Seas, for her comparisons because it "hosts a generous mix of age groups" and travels year-round to the Bahamas and Caribbean.
As well as year-round warmth, the cruise ship, needless to say, scored higher on just about every comparison. The rooms are smaller but ships offer far more dens, libraries, dance halls and atriums. They also have on average only two or three passengers per employee (versus between 10 and 40 to one employee in a retirement home), physicians and nurses on duty 24-7 and often even mini-hospitals.
The wait staff in the dining room are adept at remembering your favourite drink when you sit down and could easily be pressed into service as medication dispensers for those seniors who have trouble remembering to take their pills, she said. And cruise ship food is tastier and more plentiful, which is an issue with many seniors who have problems keeping on weight.
"Nobody wants to go to the old-age home," she said, "but if you asked `why don't you move to a cruise ship, you don't know what you're missing,' you'd get a different response."
In fact, Lindquist surveyed a group of seniors aged 65 to 85 who routinely rated cruise ship living higher than the seniors' home options and agreed that a market exists for cruise ship living as an alternative.
What's more, the biggest complaint among seniors is their family doesn't visit them enough, Lindquist said. That might be a different story if going to visit grandma meant spending a week on a cruise.
"I think it's a cool idea for those who want it," said Judy Cutler, director of communications for CARP Canada's Association for the 50-Plus, adding she would "personally hate it. But seniors, like all other people have different tastes and lifestyles.
"Why say all people have to be in a retirement home or a community living facility," she said.
"I wouldn't be surprised if, with the aging population, the cruise ship business picks up on this."
She noted that to keep their OHIP coverage, Ontario residents can't leave the province for more than six months a year.
But even these things can be worked out, she said.
"I can just see CARP's next roundtable discussion on how to deal with cruise ship living. Let's have lots of ideas and give people choices and options."
While Lindquist doesn't know of any cruise ship offering retirement living, "it's actually very feasible," she said. Individuals could start doing it tomorrow by going for a week and gradually building up the amount of time they stay there. The cruise lines might also like the idea that some of their cabins were occupied year-round, even in the off-season.
Only one cruise ship, The World of ResidenSea, has 110 occupied floating condos, and the people who own them don't talk about what it's like, a spokesperson said. The condos, which range from 1,106 to 3,242 square feet, cost their owners between $2 million and $6.84 million (U.S.), plus monthly dues of about $5,000. "They're filthy rich, my dear," he explained.
A spokesperson for the Cruise Line Industry Association, which represents all 19 major lines, said he had heard of seniors living on ships, "but I've never seen a cruise line market this as an alternative to assisted care.
"There are people who have done it but it's not commonplace or routine," said Brian Major. "Cruise lines in general are looking for a broad audience people from all walks of life totally the same market that Disney World is looking for."
Still, if the idea catches on, seniors could have a much more enjoyable later life experience, Lindquist said, "and for a change, look forward to a time when they become less independent."
Toronto Star
Ahoy, seniors: Take a cruise into retirement
ELAINE CAREY
MEDICAL REPORTER
You step out of your retirement-home room to see a vista of palm-tree-lined beaches and island mountaintops, and savour the tang of the sea air.
Later, there's a midnight buffet. And maybe a movie.
Is this retirement or life on a cruise ship? It's both.
Living on board ship is a feasible option for seniors, costs about the same as a room in a traditional retirement home and is infinitely more attractive, according to a study in today's issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society.
Cruise ships could easily become floating retirement homes for seniors who still have their mental faculties but need some help with daily living activities, the study says. They offer three meals a day with escorts to the dining room, doctors and nurses on board, housekeeping and laundry services and probably far better nightly entertainment.
"It's better than being sent off on an ice floe," said Lee Lindquist, the study's author and a geriatric physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and an instructor of medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. And with all those aging baby boomers on the horizon, it could be the ideal solution, since there won't be enough homes to house them.
"You could have pockets of old people on a cruise so they could have interaction with people of all ages," she said in an interview.
Lindquist compared the costs over a 20-year life expectancy of moving to an assisted living facility (similar to Canadian retirement homes) and a cruise ship.
She found the net cost of 20 years of cruise ship living was only about $2,440 (Canadian) more on the cruise ship ($282,000 versus $279,560), but the quality was higher.
In Ontario, retirement homes, which are not subsidized, range from about $1,500 to $5,000 per month for a private room, including a range of optional services such as meal plans, according to the provincial government. The cruise worked out to an average of $3,186 a month.
Lindquist used a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Majesty of the Seas, for her comparisons because it "hosts a generous mix of age groups" and travels year-round to the Bahamas and Caribbean.
As well as year-round warmth, the cruise ship, needless to say, scored higher on just about every comparison. The rooms are smaller but ships offer far more dens, libraries, dance halls and atriums. They also have on average only two or three passengers per employee (versus between 10 and 40 to one employee in a retirement home), physicians and nurses on duty 24-7 and often even mini-hospitals.
The wait staff in the dining room are adept at remembering your favourite drink when you sit down and could easily be pressed into service as medication dispensers for those seniors who have trouble remembering to take their pills, she said. And cruise ship food is tastier and more plentiful, which is an issue with many seniors who have problems keeping on weight.
"Nobody wants to go to the old-age home," she said, "but if you asked `why don't you move to a cruise ship, you don't know what you're missing,' you'd get a different response."
In fact, Lindquist surveyed a group of seniors aged 65 to 85 who routinely rated cruise ship living higher than the seniors' home options and agreed that a market exists for cruise ship living as an alternative.
What's more, the biggest complaint among seniors is their family doesn't visit them enough, Lindquist said. That might be a different story if going to visit grandma meant spending a week on a cruise.
"I think it's a cool idea for those who want it," said Judy Cutler, director of communications for CARP Canada's Association for the 50-Plus, adding she would "personally hate it. But seniors, like all other people have different tastes and lifestyles.
"Why say all people have to be in a retirement home or a community living facility," she said.
"I wouldn't be surprised if, with the aging population, the cruise ship business picks up on this."
She noted that to keep their OHIP coverage, Ontario residents can't leave the province for more than six months a year.
But even these things can be worked out, she said.
"I can just see CARP's next roundtable discussion on how to deal with cruise ship living. Let's have lots of ideas and give people choices and options."
While Lindquist doesn't know of any cruise ship offering retirement living, "it's actually very feasible," she said. Individuals could start doing it tomorrow by going for a week and gradually building up the amount of time they stay there. The cruise lines might also like the idea that some of their cabins were occupied year-round, even in the off-season.
Only one cruise ship, The World of ResidenSea, has 110 occupied floating condos, and the people who own them don't talk about what it's like, a spokesperson said. The condos, which range from 1,106 to 3,242 square feet, cost their owners between $2 million and $6.84 million (U.S.), plus monthly dues of about $5,000. "They're filthy rich, my dear," he explained.
A spokesperson for the Cruise Line Industry Association, which represents all 19 major lines, said he had heard of seniors living on ships, "but I've never seen a cruise line market this as an alternative to assisted care.
"There are people who have done it but it's not commonplace or routine," said Brian Major. "Cruise lines in general are looking for a broad audience people from all walks of life totally the same market that Disney World is looking for."
Still, if the idea catches on, seniors could have a much more enjoyable later life experience, Lindquist said, "and for a change, look forward to a time when they become less independent."
