Major companies launching ships after 15 months of inactivity
Cruise lines are firing up their ships’ engines for passengers ready to sail the seas and rivers again after 15 months of COVID-19 pandemic shutdown.
One of the world’s largest cruising companies, Royal Caribbean Cruises, launched its Freedom of the Seas ship June 20 from Miami, the first major cruise from a U.S. port since March 2020, when the pandemic started. The trip was a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-designated “simulated cruise,” in which all guests cruised for free and employees were volunteers as part of a test voyage for safety and other protocols.
Celebrity Cruises, owned by Royal, this past Saturday launched the first official cruise from a U.S. port with paying passengers since the pandemic hit. Its Celebrity Edge ship, with 1,100 passengers and more than 800 crew, sailed from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on a seven-night Caribbean journey.
Most of the other large cruise lines will begin cruises next month and in August. The Caribbean, the Mediterranean, Europe and Alaska all are popular destinations for U.S. travelers.
“Europe is starting to open up, so that’s good, also,” Robin Hershberger, vice president and co-owner (with brother Dave) of Prestige Travel in Montgomery, said. Her late father, Donn Hershberger, founded the agency in 1974, and she began as an agent in 1976.
“If you want to go, it’s really good to book now,” she said. “There’s a lot of pent-up demand for cruising or any tours since no one could go anywhere for the last year and a half. We are very busy and really glad.”
Rules and regulations are still fluid, so travelers should check with the travel agency, cruise line, airline, tour company and so on for vaccination and mask requirements or other concerns.
National parks have been extremely busy this year, along with Alaskan tours, Hershberger said. She recently returned from an Alaskan cruise on a small UnCruise
Adventures ship that started and finished in Juneau, with stops but no ports of call. She said all passengers were vaccinated.
Hershberger said the past year-plus has been difficult. Even now, travel agencies must check daily to see what has changed, with cruise lines still announcing new cruises ready for booking and others being delayed. Although she didn’t have exact figures, she said bookings are probably at about 60% of what they were pre-COVID.
“When this first started, it was very hard to know what to do,” she said. “Every day, things were different.” In March 2020, she had a family ready to go on a cruise, and they were informed that they would have to quarantine upon return, so they decided to back out. When they sought a refund the day before the scheduled cruise, the cruise line didn’t want to issue one. At 3 o’clock that afternoon, the cruise canceled the cruise.
The family then booked a cruise for last Thanksgiving, and that was canceled; then they tried for this month, and that was canceled. Hershberger said they now are planning a cruise for March 2022—two years after the original booking, Hershberger said.
Managing the credits, refunds and different rates also became difficult for the travel industry, whether it was for cruises, flying or other travel, she said. Most people now have received refunds or applied credits toward future travel, “but for the first couple of weeks, every day, there was something different. You didn’t know from hour to hour what the responses were going to be. I really think cruise lines, tour companies and airlines stepped in and did a really good job as far as not having any penalties and letting you change things.”
The CDC-imposed shutdown forced three industry giants—Carnival, Norwegian and Royal Caribbean—to raise more than $40 billion in financing just to stay afloat without any revenue, the Associated Press reported. Collectively, they lost $20 billion last year and another $4.5 billion in the first quarter of 2021, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
While most cruisers board the big ships for ocean voyages, various companies also operate cruises on rivers—in the United States and Europe, for instance—which provides a more intimate setting and a different kind of trip.
“I feel very optimistic about getting people back traveling,” Hershberger said. “I’ve been around since 9/11, and that was horrible, but it was not at the scale of this”—with travel shutting down globally this time. “People are very anxious to travel—‘Get me outta here!’”
