It’s not just the most dedicated cruisers planning to set sail - 27 percent of those who will or might cruise in the coming year have never done so before, meaning the industry is enticing new entrants despite the challenges of recent months.Įncouragingly, those who plan to cruise are ready to spend. While consumer intent to cruise did drop after the recommendation, the share of those who plan to travel in the next year whose plans “definitely” or “probably” involve a cruise - 17 percent - is now the same as what was measured in October 2021, before the omicron variant introduced a new wave of chaos to the industry. The CDC recently recommended that even fully vaccinated travelers should avoid cruises due to the highly transmissible omicron variant. The pandemic has bruised, but not broken, the cruise industry And while debate rages across various sectors of the travel industry about whether companies should enact policies that go above and beyond government-mandated safety measures, the cruise industry would be best served by pressing on with existing protocols in place. 15, 2022, meaning those protocols are now optional for cruise lines. It was inextricably linked with the emergence of COVID-19: One of the earliest international headlines about the pandemic was the Diamond Princess cruise ship’s quarantine off the coast of Japan in February 2020 due to an outbreak, which eventually resulted in 712 confirmed COVID-19 cases and nine deaths among passengers and crew.Īfter a complete shutdown of the industry in March 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed cruises to resume in November 2020 under a Conditional Sailing Order (CSO) that mandated strict health and safety protocols for crew and passengers. The past two years have been anything but smooth sailing for the cruise industry.
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