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Global Travel Taskforce ‘didn’t go far enough’ for cruise

The UK government’s Global Travel Taskforce hasn’t gone far enough in addressing the cruise sector, according to Tui’s UK & Ireland managing director of cruise.

A report issued late last month said “now is not the time” to restart cruising and recommended “a gradual phasing in of operations”.

Speaking at this week’s Virtual Clia Cruise Showcase, Chris Hackney said: “When the taskforce was first mentioned by the government, we obviously welcomed the news as an opportunity to cement some of the conversations that had happened between the steering group, the cruise lines and the government in the preceding months.

“But it’s fair to say it probably didn’t go far enough in terms of what was in the documentation. There’s a reference to cruise and it talks about trying to provide clarity for the cruise lines to restart again, but we were hopeful there would be further clarification around the timelines, which are clearly very vague.

“We need more concrete action from the government, and whilst we obviously welcome the conversations and the fact that it has been very collaborative, we do need the Foreign Office advice to change so we can get consumer confidence back. We are coming into a key wave period now and consumers want some certainty to make that decision around booking a cruise for 2021.”

Nick Stace, chief executive of Saga Travel, agreed more government action was needed for cruise to successfully restart and said the cruise sector had “literally done everything the government has asked” to help.

He said the Foreign Office’s cruise-specific travel advice remained a “tremendous block” for the sector, especially among the line’s cruisers who tended to be “generally speaking, older and very law abiding.”

He said the line had hosted officials from Public Health England, the Department for Transport and the Foreign Office onboard Spirit of Discovery in July in order to “put everything out on the table and see what it is we need to do in order to improve”.

“We are asking that the Foreign Office now either revise or remove their cruise specific travel advisory,” he added. “We’ve set a target and we want that to be the case by the new year.

“We are pushing as hard as we can with all agencies of the government, even right through to number 10 and the Treasury. UK cruise is worth 88,000 jobs and £10bn to the UK economy, so it’s critical that we get cruise up and running in the early part of next year.”

Stuart Leven, vice president of government relations at Royal Caribbean Group, said being able to show proven experience from lines that restarted earlier this year would be crucial in helping support the case to the government.

“One of the interesting things we found with the UK government is that they didn’t know terribly much about cruise,” he said. “But with the likes of MSC, Costa and Tui getting things up and running again, we could not only just talk about the theory of protocols but show the actuality of them, and not just in terms of how they mitigate Covid when getting on the ship, but also in terms of what you do in the event it does turn up.”

Leven also attended the Saga summit and said one of the key takeaways was “never send anything to government unless it’s got a pretty picture and an arrow on it. Don’t expect for one second they understand everything about our industry.”

Stace said the overarching goal was to “give confidence that cruise can return in a manageable way. We are utterly convinced it can, and we have the ambition that cruising with Saga, and with other operators too, should be the safest environment in which to see the world. That’s our aspiration and I really think we can do it.”

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