Skift Take
Big cruise is back, even as Florida and Texas turn cruising vaccination requirements into a political football. With industry giants eager to start making money again, it'll be a tough road ahead, from rebuilding consumer confidence to sailing to where vaccines are lagging. Is this restart premature?
The recovery of cruises is showing signs of life, 15 months into the Covid pandemic — the longest pause yet on North American cruising.
Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Millenium on June 5 sailed out of St. Maarten as the first ship to resume cruising in the region, while its Celebrity Edge ship will be the first to enjoy a revenue sail out of a U.S. port on June 26 for a seven-night Caribbean cruise from Fort Lauderdale. Carnival Corporation is scheduled for its first simulated sail out of Galveston on July 3 and there’s a second July departure planned out of Miami.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has also approved eight simulated voyages thus far, with more being added as the restart evolves. Test sails are for ships that will be accepting unvaccinated passengers on board with a series of yet to be finalized testing protocols.
“There's a lot of excitement, but the feeling of excitement is also accompanied with the feeling of, we have a long way to go on the road to recovery; this is just the beginning,” said Bari Golin-Blaugrund, vice president of strategic communications and public affairs at Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA).
Golin-Blaugrund said that the rationale for the restart was not based on economic impact but based on science, and following low incidence restarts in Europe.
In reality, the temptation from the world’s three largest cruise lines to recoup losses will be huge in spite of an ongoing global pandemic in other parts of the world — namely, the industry's most profitable region, the Caribbean.
But what has changed and what hasn’t?
It’s that lack of certainty around the cruising experience itself — including divergent protocols from the cruise lines — and what it will look like that experts say may keep consumers at bay for now as the industry resumes.
“The challenge is that there is not yet a lot of consistency and that information changes quickly,” said Drew Landgrebe, travel advisor at Charting Memories Travel, based in Jacksonville, Florida.
“Since no one really knows what is happening in the short run, I am not actively trying to get people to book near term; I am ho
