Appealing to travel advisors to start to sell cruises again, Royal Caribbean Group Chairman and CEO Richard Fain states his case in a newly released video.
The time has come, he said, to focus on how we come out of the pandemic, rather than how we should live during it. The time has come to look forward and do what we have done for decades, sell cruises.
Fain said a surge of interest has come mainly via the internet rather than from travel advisors, as people became used to buying things online during the pandemic, and continue to do so, while many travel advisors cut down on staff and marketing.
“Now, we need to rebuild so travel advisors need to do more,” he said. Appealing to travel advisors, Fain said: “We need you to reach our full potential. It was the personal contact with travel advisors that built up the knowledge and awareness (of cruising) in the first place.
“We need you and we need your personal touch, and the clients need you to help them understand the complexity of the product.”
Fain noted that while the pandemic is not over, its prevalence in the industrialized world is falling, and the main drivers behind the disease are understood and can be controlled.
He also noted that cruise ships have advantages over land-based comparables with the vast bulk of people onboard being vaccinated, and the sanitation being controlled, including air filtration, and strict health and safety protocols being enforced.
“As a result, we can make ships safer than shore-based alternatives,” Fain said.
Compared to a CDC colour-coded COVID-19 map of the United States, Fain said that cruise ships would be blue, representing the lowest category of risk, and better than most of the counties in the U.S.
MSC Cruises has announced that it’s MSC Divina has received approval from the CDC for its Conditional Sailing Certificate, following the successful completion of a simulated voyage last week.
With approval granted, the MSC Divina is set to become MSC Cruises’ 11th ship to resume cruising globally, as well as the company’s first to set sail from its new homeport, Orlando/Port Canaveral.
“After officially resuming cruises from the U.S. with the MSC Meraviglia in early August, we are thrilled to cross another significant milestone toward bringing our entire fleet back to sea around the world for safe, relaxing and enjoyable cruises,” said Rubén Rodríguez, President of MSC Cruises USA. “In the U.S. in particular, the MSC Divina’s restart will bring us into an entirely new, easily accessible embarkation destination, providing our guests with more choice when cruising with us to popular destinations in The Bahamas and Caribbean, including our stunning new private island destination, Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve.”
With MSC Divina’s upcoming restart, MSC Cruises’ guests can select from a variety of three-, four- and seven-night itineraries from two embarkation ports in Florida: Miami and Orlando/Port Canaveral.
Following MSC Divina’s restart, the MSC Meraviglia will add seven-night cruises to The Bahamas and Caribbean.
All cruises will continue to operate under MSC Cruises’ health and safety protocol – including testing measures, vaccine requirements, mask-wearing, social distancing, enhanced sanitization and more. MSC Cruises itineraries from Florida ports also feature stops at Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve in The Bahamas.
With ships docking at the island from early morning into the evening – and often overnight – guests can enjoy the two miles of pristine, white-sand beaches and activities including stand-up paddle boarding, kayaking, wave runner rides and more, MSC said.
In the ongoing saga that is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) versus Florida, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. was recently granted a preliminary injunction to sail fully vaccinated cruises from its coast.
And earlier this week, after a 17-month cruise suspension, it did exactly that.
On Aug. 15, Norwegian Gem set sail from the company’s homeport in Miami, the third of the company’s 17 ships to set sail since the return of cruising (and marking the first voyage from Florida).
“It has been an exhilarating few weeks as we relaunch our fleet, reunite with our shipboard families and welcome our guests back for their long-awaited cruise vacations,” said Harry Sommer, president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line, in an Aug. 15 statement. “I’ve been impressed and proud of how our global team and partners have come together to safely bring back cruising, an over $55 billion-dollar industry that positively impacts communities around the world.”
Several developments led to Norwegian Gem’s embarkation in Florida: In the past few weeks, a federal court upheld the state’s lawsuit that the CDC’s Conditional Sail Order (CSO) should not be a requirement. As a result, it stands only as a regional recommendation, though many cruise lines plan to abide by the CDC guidelines, regardless. Additionally, the government agency has noted that sailings with 95% or more vaccinated guests and crew are free to make their own decisions regarding COVID-19 testing parameters and any mask mandates (at least for those passengers that are fully inoculated).
Several cruise lines that were initially not requiring pre-cruise testing and facial coverings, such as Carnival Cruise Line, are starting to mandate both as cases of the Delta variant spike in the U.S.
Norwegian was an early adopter of strict COVID-19 protocols. Its Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises brands have always required pre-voyage testing and 100% vaccination of its guests and crew. Because of this, passengers are able to enjoy all venues onboard without the use of masks.
“The health and safety of our guests, crew and the communities we visit is our No. 1 priority, today, tomorrow and forever. It’s not a slogan or a tagline, we fiercely mean it and our commitment to these principles is demonstrated by the lengths our company has gone through to provide the safest possible cruise experience from Florida.”
Additionally, in Florida, businesses operating locally were formerly forbidden from mandating vaccinations of its patrons, but that has now changed. A judge ruled in Norwegian’s favour to permit the company to ask for documentation of vaccine status, which led to Norwegian’s Gem’s planned launch.
“The health and safety of our guests, crew and the communities we visit is our No. 1 priority, today, tomorrow and forever,” said Frank Del Rio, president and CEO of Norwegian. “It’s not a slogan or a tagline, we fiercely mean it and our commitment to these principles is demonstrated by the lengths our company has gone through to provide the safest possible cruise experience from Florida. We want nothing more than to sail from Miami, the cruise capital of the world, and from the other fabulous Florida ports and we welcome [the] ruling that allows us to sail with 100% fully vaccinated guests and crew, which we believe is the safest and most prudent way to resume cruise operations amid this global pandemic.”
In fact, when I sailed last week on the Norwegian Encore in Alaska, Harry Sommer, president and CEO of NCL, and members of the corporation’s SailSAFE health and safety program reiterated the same during a press conference, with Sommer stating that he believes that permitting 5% unvaccinated passengers — which could amount to hundreds of passengers — is significant, and he won’t expose that many to the virus, even if it means not sailing with young children for a period.
Program participant Dr. Stephen Ostroff further considered full vaccination to be the “linchpin” for healthy cruising at this time.
“[It] 100% ought to be the standard for cruise ships quite frankly, pure and simple,” Ostroff said.
Norwegian Gem will traverse a series of weeklong voyages to the Caribbean and four-day cruises to the Bahamas through Oct. 17, 2021, before repositioning to New York for five to 11-night voyages to the Bahamas, the Caribbean and Bermuda.
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