With the 2020 peak season lost, the return to service for some shipping companies is happening slowly, as the second wave of the pandemic is not helping to increase demand.
All entries related to the pandemic timeline are accessible here.
Article from CruisesNews magazine no. 54 – October 2020
First part CruisesNews nº52 Second part CruisesNews nº53
During the summer, TUI Cruises demonstrated that cruises can be conducted with large ships and maximum safety, and MSC Cruises successfully followed suit. However, it was a smaller cruise line, Hurtigruten, that made a blunder by disregarding its own protocols. Apart from that incident, all others have been false alarms; the protocols are so strict that there have been no outbreaks on board in three months.
In the US, the lifting of the cruise ban is still pending, and some senior shipping executives have expressed optimism that it will happen before the end of the year, but that remains to be seen.
A Summer to Push the Start Button
As we reported in the previous article in this series on the pandemic, TUI Cruises began operating cruises with 111,500-ton ships on July 24. These were cruises on the Mein Schiff 2, departing from Hamburg and non-stop, followed by cruises on the Mein Schiff 1, departing from Kiel. In mid-September, the Mein Schiff 6 began operating in the Greek Islands. Until the end of September, these cruises proceeded without incident, but then an alarm was raised due to 12 suspected cases of coronavirus on the Mein Schiff 6. However, the COVID-19 response plan was activated in collaboration with the Greek authorities, and both PCR and antigen tests came back negative, allowing the ship to continue operating normally.
TUI Cruises, MSC Cruises and Costa Cruises are the cruise lines with the largest ships already in operation.
The first major incident in the "new normal" for cruises actually occurred with the Norwegian cruise line Hurtigruten in early August, with 36 positive cases on board the MS Roald Amundsen among passengers and crew. The company's CEO, Daniel Skjeldam, himself acknowledged errors in the application of their own protocol, specifically failing to properly manage crew quarantines before resuming operations.
MSC Cruises became the first major international cruise line to restart its cruises on August 16 with the MSC Grandiosa, after receiving approval from Italian authorities under a strict protocol. Initially, cruises would only visit Italian ports, with passengers only from the Schengen Area, who would have to present a negative COVID-19 test result at the terminal before boarding. Passengers residing in countries classified as high-risk by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), such as Spain, were required to present a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours prior to departure. These cruises did make port calls, but only those passengers who purchased excursions organized by the cruise line were allowed to disembark, as required by the Italian government to ensure adherence to protocols and maintain the isolation bubble created on board. To make it easier for passengers to enjoy the destinations visited, MSC Cruises began offering packages of five excursions for €100. Despite this, the company was forced to expel a family of passengers during the first departure of the MSC Grandiosa, as they repeatedly separated from the group during the excursion in Naples, so that, upon returning to the ship, their suitcases were found outside of it.
All CLIA member cruise lines commit to testing all passengers and crew for coronavirus before boarding.
The MSC Grandiosa was joined by the MSC Magnifica on October 19, departing from Genoa, after its entry into service, initially scheduled for September 26 from Bari, was delayed. The MSC Magnifica offers 10-night cruises departing from Genoa, Civitavecchia, and Messina, attracting passengers from all regions of Italy. It is scheduled to begin its round-the-world voyage in January, following this series of Mediterranean cruises.
The Canary Islands government has authorized inter-island cruises with pre-boarding coronavirus tests from November 5th.
Costa Cruises and its subsidiary for the German market, AIDA Cruises, took a little longer to get started. AIDA had planned to launch in August, but a delay in receiving permission from the Italian authorities forced them to postpone it, and it wasn't until October 17th that their first cruise to Italian ports departed on the AIDAblu, embarking in Civitavecchia.
For its part, Costa Cruises resumed its cruises, also exclusively to Italian ports, on September 6 with the Costa Deliziosa departing from Trieste. The first three cruises were reserved for Italian passengers, as were the first cruises of the Costa Diadema, which entered service on September 19 from Genoa. It wasn't until October 10 that the company's flagship, the Costa Smeralda, entered service, departing from Savona to visit La Spezia, Cagliari, Naples, Messina, and Civitavecchia (Rome). As with MSC Cruises, European passengers whose country is considered high-risk by the ECDC must present a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours prior to departure.
Passengers from countries considered high risk by the ECDC must present a negative PCR test performed within 72 hours prior to boarding.
These pre-cruise PCR tests discourage many European passengers from taking a cruise, but this requirement, along with rapid testing at the terminal, has proven very effective, and there have been no outbreaks on board cruise lines that implement them. So much so, that CLIA itself issued a statement committing that, from now on, all member companies will conduct pre-boarding tests for all passengers and crew.
Mystic Invest continues to grow with the purchase of Vasco da Gama and Seatrade awards Mario Ferreira as personality of the year.
However, it is inevitable that cases will arise and be detected on board, and that is why protocols exist: to detect, isolate, and prevent contagion. A 78-year-old French man was disembarked from the Costa Diadema on October 14 in Naples and taken to a hospital after testing positive. Therefore, both Costa Cruises and other cruise lines are offering insurance that covers medical expenses in cases of coronavirus. Celestyal Cruises will even include it at no extra cost on its cruises for early 2021 for bookings made until November 30.
Shipyards continue to deliver ships while awaiting the restart in the US.
All cruise ships scheduled for delivery in the coming years will be delayed due to the pandemic's impact on shipyards, but those nearing completion have only been delayed by a few months, such as the Enchanted Princess, which was delivered to the cruise line in a virtual ceremony on October 1, the Iona, delivered to P&O on October 12, and the Silver Moon, which will be delivered at the end of October.
For its part, Disney Cruise Line has announced unspecified delays for its new ship, the Disney Wish, scheduled for delivery at the end of 2021.
In addition, Carnival Cruise Line continues to divest itself of its oldest and least efficient ships, announcing the sale of the Carnival Fascination and Carnival Imagination, after getting rid of the Carnival Fantasy and Carnival Inspiration in July, which ended up in the scrapyard in Aliaga, Türkiye, alongside Pullmantur's ships.
In three months of operation, there have been no significant outbreaks, but some isolated cases have been detected and quickly isolated.
On October 14, Mystic Invest, the holding company of Portuguese businessman Mario Ferreira, announced the purchase of the Vasco da Gama at auction following the bankruptcy of Cruise & Maritime Voyages. The 55,451-ton vessel, with a capacity for 1,258 passengers, was built in 1993 as the Statendam for Holland America Line. This is undoubtedly another giant leap for Mystic Cruises, which is currently building its third ship after launching the World Explorer in 2019 and the World Voyager in 2020. The company plans a fleet of seven newly built ships. Mystic Invest also owns the river cruise companies Douro Azul and Nicko Cruises, among other investments.
In the US, people are still waiting for the cruise ban to be lifted before the end of the year.
Across the Atlantic, despite the industry's confidence that the US cruise ban would be lifted in October, this has not yet happened, and the three major North American cruise lines—Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean Group, and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings—have already canceled their cruises scheduled for November. On October 9, a virtual meeting took place between Vice President Mike Pence, CDC Director Robert Redfield, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Alex Azar, and former Utah Governor and HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, with top cruise line executives: Arnold Donald, CEO of Carnival Corporation; Frank del Rio, CEO of NCLH; Richard Fain, CEO of Royal Caribbean Group; Thomas Malzoum, President of Disney Signature Experience; and Pierfrancesco Vago, Executive Chairman of MSC Cruises. Despite the industry's enormous effort in hiring top specialists and submitting extensive health and safety protocols, both the CDC director and the HHS Secretary remain reluctant to restart cruises in the U.S. However, some executives participating in the meeting expressed optimism that it could happen before the end of the year.
Spain, poised to begin.
On October 18, the Canary Islands government published its authorization for cruise ships to operate between the islands starting November 5, suggesting an imminent restart of activity in the archipelago. The cruise lines that applied were TUI Cruises and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, and they will be required to test all passengers and crew before the cruise begins. Both Costa Cruises and MSC Cruises have expressed their intention to operate in Spain, but the situation remains uncertain. In fact, on October 15, Costa Cruises had to bring forward the arrival of the Costa Diadema in Genoa following President Macron's announcement of a curfew in Paris and eight other cities, as the ship was at that time on a charter cruise with exclusively French passengers.
New ships have left the shipyards while older ones have changed hands or are headed for scrapping.
The COVID-19 pandemic, far from subsiding, is gaining strength day by day worldwide. While there were 86,000 new cases daily in May, there are now around 400,000. Fortunately, the number of daily deaths has dropped from 7,000 in April to the current 6,000, meaning we have gone from a mortality rate of 8% to 1.5%. This presents a difficult scenario for decision-making.
