Cruise lines are taking different approaches to vaccination requirements but widely agree that non-U.S. markets offer them the best chance at resuming operations due to industry guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Guests and crew members will have to be vaccinated to sail when they resume service this summer, Norwegian Cruise Line and Virgin Voyages have said.
“The vaccine, combined with our science-backed health and safety protocols, will help us provide our guests with what we believe will be the healthiest and safest vacation at sea,” said Harry Sommer, Norwegian Cruise Line’s president and CEO.
Carnival confirmed that it is not taking a position yet on whether to make coronavirus vaccinations mandatory.
NORWEGIAN CRUISE LINE TO BEGIN SAILING AGAIN FOR PASSENGERS WITH VACCINES
“Vaccines are an important tool, along with other advancements in science and technology including treatment therapeutics and advanced and affordable testing,” a Carnival spokesman said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “While we are aligned as an industry on our larger goal to resume cruising in the U.S., it is understandable that cruise companies would undertake different approaches to the requirement for vaccines, which we feel is a more complex issue.”
Though these cruise lines differ on vaccinations, Virgin, Norwegian, and Carnival indicated that their attention is on non-U.S. markets as there is no set date for a resumption of cruises in the United States.
Virgin is canceling sailings from U.S. ports, it announced Thursday, and Carnival threatened to do the same following an updated “Framework for Conditional Sailing Order” that the CDC released earlier in April.
This set of instructions directs cruise lines to increase from weekly to daily the reporting frequency of COVID-19 cases and illnesses. They must also establish a plan and timeline for the vaccination of crews and port personnel.
“The irony is that today an American can fly to any number of destinations to take a cruise, but cannot board a ship in the U.S.,” the Cruise Lines International Association, of which Virgin and Carnival are members, said in a statement calling for the CDC to lift its conditional sailing order. “The new requirements are unduly burdensome, largely unworkable, and seem to reflect a zero-risk objective rather than the mitigation approach to COVID that is the basis for every other US sector of our society.”
“It is generally accepted industrywide that the recent April 2 CDC guidance collectively is largely unworkable and stands in stark contrast to every other travel and tourism sector, as well as society at large,” the Carnival spokesperson said. “Our view is that we should be treated just like any other travel or hospital company.”
Despite its frustration with the guidance, Carnival has reason to be optimistic. The company‘s bookings for all future company cruises during the first quarter of 2021 were about 90% higher than booking volumes during the fourth quarter of 2020, it announced in a quarterly update Wednesday.
Cumulative advanced bookings for 2022 are ahead of 2019’s numbers “despite minimal advertising or marketing,” according to the company’s report.
Six of Carnival’s nine brands are expected to resume limited guest cruise operations by this summer, the company said, with AIDA Cruises already having done so in late March.
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Costa Cruises expects to resume operations in May sailing to Italian ports, and P&O Cruises, Cunard, and Princess Cruises will each offer U.K. cruises this summer. Seabourn expects to resume operations sailing from Greece starting this summer.
