Royal Caribbean signs deal for new contact tracing band

The cruise line Royal Caribbean has partnered with Vancouver-based TraceSafe, an IoT Tracking specialist, to develop a contact tracing wearable band which can be used on cruise ships to easily identify close contacts in the case a passenger or crew member tests positive for Covid-19.

Called the Tracelet, the bracelets will be deployed across Royal Caribbean’s 24-ship fleet, which includes four of the world’s largest passenger vessels. Considering the company will carry three million passengers in 2021, making up 19% of global cruise traffic according to Cruise Market Watch, it would not be surprising to see competing operators follow suit.
TraceSafe’s bands rely on a location-aware Internet of Things (IoT) platform, which have been scaled for large-scale enterprise operations such as across a fleet of cruise ships.

Contact tracing band Tracelet by TraceSafe (Image: TraceSafe)

Royal Caribbean Group Chief Product Innovation Officer, Jay Schneider, said about the new agreement,

It was the willingness of the TraceSafe team to develop a custom Tracelet device that met our requirements for style and design that propelled the partnership forward.

Royal Caribbean started working on the technology behind Tracelets even before the pandemic, but pivoted the technology for contact tracing in 2020 when the cruise industry shutdown. Royal Caribbean hopes the wearable will also help it to improve logistics by analysing location data to better understand passenger movement onboard its ships.

Author: Tim Cole
Image Credit: Royal Caribbean