Resume of restart of future operation and company updates ref. season 2021.
Resume of restart of future operation and company updates ref season 2021.
Slowly, most of the brands in the Sector signs of gradual recovery in the cruise sector and they truly look forward to all their operation restarting later in the year.
The last few weeks showed some significant booking trends in the passenger fleet in all the cruise sector. Most of the Companies start various marketing initiatives helping them to retain more than 60-70% of the bookings.
As per taking a close look at the overall situation in all cruise regions/mainly the United States and the Caribbean Region, it is clear that the roll-out of the vaccination is going to take time.
In the US it will be mid year before a significant part of the population is vaccinated – the age group of travellers falls into the priority category and from traveller comments it is apparent that once vaccinated people want to travel.
At all, travellers miss their adventures and earnestly seek to once again explore the world.
On the other side, travel restrictions are a real worry again. Airlines are continuing to be extremely cautious about scheduling international flights with most inbound cities having at most one or two services day from key US gateway cities – if that. So the airlines too are also taking a very cautious approach to a restart. Most of the careers have also severely limited their flights for the next 2-3 months.
From the last 9-10 months all of us/all sectors, especially the cruise industry faces many restrictions for more or less every country – many of which need to end before the cruises of the different brands can resume. In some cases it is necessary to take the PCR test before leaving and then immediately after arrival. In some countries and destinations before arrival you need to attend 2-3 different tests during your travel PCR and antigen test, to have an online registration in the different entry medical respective forms as per the country requirements. This in terms has seriously impacted crew change for all lay-up ships and has turned this into a complex operation to say the least!
Looking at the overall short-term situation most of the brands decided to prolong the non-operation period until Beginning of Summer 2021. And finally it is a little bit disappointing but given all we see we feel it is realistic.
All Companies of course they announced that this is the right decision albeit not an easy one.
The security, safety and health of both travellers and crew are paramount and the key consideration in the decision-making.