The chief executives of major cruise lines say stringent onboard protocols and pre-departure testing plans mean cruisers could be ‘safer than in your hometown’.
Bosses of Norwegian Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean Group and Carnival Corporation were speaking in a panel discussion aired this morning at the Clia Virtual Cruise Showcase.
Frank del Rio, chief executive of Norwegian Cruise Line, said: “We think our measures will keep you safer than in your hometown and we think you will be better off on a cruise ship than just about any other place in the world.
“There will be some changes to the cruise experience, but all the venues, theatres, spas, shops, bars and restaurants on our ships will be open. They may have to be executed slightly differently, but let’s face it, in your hometown you also need to take additional measures.”
Del Rio said testing would play a key role in the resumption of cruise. “The number one preventative measure the industry has committed to, that no other industry I know of anywhere in the world has done, is to say that we’re going to do 100% testing of our guests and our crew. There have been great strides on the technology side of testing. While there’s no silver bullet, the number one goal is to keep the virus off the ships, and testing is at the forefront of that.”
Richard Fain, chairman and chief executive of Royal Caribbean Group, said that while it might not be possible to completely eradicate risk, the emphasis would be on mitigating spread and isolating individual cases.
“We know even with testing and a shipboard bubble it’s not possible to be perfect, so our objective is to make sure that if a Covid case does occur, it’s a question of cases and not an outbreak,” he said.
“We have had cases in Europe but I look at those as successes because we’ve proved we can handle them, and we need to get that message out. This is a question of science and we are addressing it by facts, with data from our experiences in 2020.”
Arnold Donald, chief executive of Carnival Corporation, added that cooperating with destinations and authorities would be the cornerstone of its strategy.
“People are concerned about what happened back in February, in March, when the pandemic first broke out, and everybody was trying to figure out everything – there was no testing, there were no protocols,” he said.
“But we will have arrangements with every destination before we go, and with the layers and layers of prevention and mitigation we’ve designed for the cruise industry, there will be ample opportunity to isolate any cases.
“We all want to avoid that scenario where you can’t get into the port – but that happened in a set of circumstances that no longer exist.”
Donald added that next year could spell a positive turning point. “My prediction for 2021 is that we will all be cruising again,” he said. “There will be some modifications but guests will still be having a great time and creating lifelong memories, and as a global society, we will have learnt to mitigate the risks.”