In September “eligible international guests” will also be able to sail from Southampton, subject to the latest UK government travel advice and their country of residence.
Anthem’s British Isles sailings feature calls to Liverpool, Belfast and Kirkwall and Glasgow. All adults must be fully vaccinated and all passengers must provide a negative Covid test result before boarding.
Anthem’s extended season opened for bookings on Wednesday (4 August).
Ben Bouldin, Royal’s vice-president EMEA, said the line was “thrilled” with the response to its UK programme since restarting, with cruises achieving “peak guest satisfaction levels”.
“We welcome the recent update from the UK government, which lifted advice against international cruise travel. While this marks a positive step forward in the global return of cruise, there are still complexities to navigate when calling at multiple European ports of call from the UK,” he added.
“This, coupled with the popularity of our British Isles sailings to date, has led to our decision to extend our sailings around the British Isles, and I’m delighted to welcome international guests to experience these itineraries, starting in September.”
Two passengers tested positive for the coronavirus during routine checks aboard a Mediterranean cruise this week, MSC Cruises said.
The passengers, who were asymptomatic, got their positive test results on Monday, according to MSC Cruises spokesman Luca Biondolillo. They were not travelling together on the MSC Seaside. Biondolillo said the individuals and their travelling groups, as well as close contacts, were immediately isolated, and no one aside from the original two passengers tested positive.
According to the Times of Malta, the vessel was not allowed to make a regular call-in to Malta’s Valletta cruise port Monday. Instead, Biondolillo said, the ship made a “technical call” — where passengers don’t disembark — and then resumed its regular schedule with a stop in Sicily.
Both passengers and their parties left the ship in Siracusa, on the island of Sicily, and were taken home “by protected MSC Cruises transport” Tuesday, the cruise company said. The ship continued its normal schedule after the Siracusa stop.
“All of this took place in line with the protocol and in coordination with the local health authorities,” Biondolillo said in an email Wednesday.
Passengers on MSC ships are not required to be vaccinated, but they have to undergo several tests: two to three days before leaving for a cruise, just before getting on the ship and midway through the cruise, Biondolillo said.
“If anything, this is another demonstration that the protocol works,” he said.
The company started sailing in the Mediterranean in August 2020 and has seen “a handful such cases” since, Biondolillo said, adding that “many thousands” of passengers have sailed safely.
Cruise ships have slowly started service again around the world, but still have not resumed in the United States since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shut the industry down last March. The agency is not requiring cruise ships to sail with vaccinated passengers but will allow those with at least 95 per cent of vaccinated crew and guests to skip test cruises meant to show how they will deal with covid-19 risks.
The first cruise from U.S. shores with paying passengers is scheduled to set sail later this month. The Celebrity Cruises ship will require everyone 16 and older to be fully vaccinated — a condition that comes into conflict with a Florida law that says businesses can’t ask for proof of vaccination status.
MSC Cruises, which is headquartered in Geneva, announced this week that it plans to start short cruises on MSC Meraviglia from Miami to the Bahamas on Aug. 2. The company recently got approval from the CDC to conduct a test cruise on that vessel.
The company said it will “welcome both vaccinated and non-vaccinated guests,” with those who are not vaccinated subject to additional testing and restrictions. Rubén Rodriguez, president of MSC Cruises USA, said in a statement that he expects the majority of passengers will be vaccinated.
“The rapid distribution of vaccines in the U.S. has been a positive step toward helping vacationers get back to travelling, and we encourage our guests to take advantage of this added layer of protection when resuming travel this summer,” he said.
Cruise shares advanced after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlined a new path to the resumption of voyages.
According to the new guidance in a letter to companies on Wednesday, ships can return to U.S. waters with paying customers if 95% of guests and 98% of the crew are vaccinated, bypassing a previous requirement for starting with trial voyages, according to a summary provided by a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named discussing private communications. The letter was previously reported by USA Today.
Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. rose as much as 5.7% to $92.45 in New York trading. Carnival Corp., the industry market-share leader, rose as much as 4.8%, and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. advanced as much as 7.1%.
On Thursday, Royal Caribbean alluded to the letter in its quarterly business update, saying the message had addressed some of the company’s “uncertainties and concerns.” Royal Caribbean said it now sees a pathway to sailing from the U.S. again during the Alaska cruise season, which runs from roughly May to September.
The CDC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. cruise industry has been essentially banned from operating via U.S. ports since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. The companies have recently ramped up lobbying efforts to win approval for a return, arguing in part that the industry was unfairly singled out for the strictest treatment even as other tourism businesses have returned in some fashion.
CDC Checklist
Technically, the CDC lifted its hard ban on cruising in October, but it replaced it with a checklist for restarting cruises that no operator has yet managed to complete. The industry had previously criticized the conditional sailing order as overly burdensome and out of touch with the new reality since the arrival of Covid inoculations. Florida, where the major cruise companies are headquartered, even sued the federal government to hasten the return of the industry.
But Royal Caribbean said the recent discussions with the CDC have turned more productive.
“They have dealt with many of these items in a constructive manner that takes into account recent advances in vaccines and medical science,” Royal Caribbean said Thursday in its first-quarter business update.
The company reported revenue totalling $42 million, which was slightly better than expected by analysts tracked by Bloomberg.
It said it has started to spend slightly more cash to cover expenses related to restarting the fleet. Royal Caribbean also noted that cumulative advanced bookings for the first half of 2022 are “within historical ranges and at higher prices” to its 2019 pre-pandemic baseline.
Wetravel2u's Weblog 