When will cruising resume? Here’s our best guess

When will cruising resume?

As the resident cruise expert here at The Points Guy, I’ve been getting that question almost every day — via emails from readers, comments on stories and even Slack messages from colleagues.

It’s a question that’s top of mind right now for everyone from cruise line employees and travel agents, who are losing their jobs by the thousands as cruises remain on hold, to investors who hold stakes in cruise companies and cruise fans who are eager to get back to sea.

It’s also a question that’s almost impossible to answer.

As the editorial chief of the world’s biggest cruise planning site, Cruise Critic, put it to me a few days ago, the new coronavirus is in control of the narrative on the topic right now — and how it drives that narrative in the coming months still is up in the air.

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“Given the uncertainty of the virus and how it will continue to affect everyday life at a global scale, it’s nearly impossible to say definitively when cruise ships will begin sailing again,” said Cruise Critic editor-in-chief, Colleen McDaniel.

Still, by reading the tea leaves — comments by cruise industry executives, health officials and the destinations that cruise ships visit, for instance — we can at least start to narrow the range of possible outcomes as to when, and how, cruising could make a comeback.

When society is ready

For now, most major lines only have canceled sailings into May or June. Cruise giant Royal Caribbean, for instance, says it will resume operations on June 12. Carnival Cruise Line is targeting a June 27 comeback. Carnival sister brand Princess Cruises is aiming for July 1.

The thing to understand about these dates is that they’re just placeholders. Cruise executives admit they don’t really know when cruising will be able to resume. They are hoping for a quick comeback. But they acknowledge a resumption date could be many months away.

In a conference call with The Points Guy and several other media outlets last week, Carnival Corp. CEO Arnold Donald said the timing for the eventual comeback of cruising would depend a lot on how long society wants to steer clear of social gatherings.

“Cruise by definition is social gathering,” Donald said in response to a question about when cruising might start up again. “When society is ready for social gathering, and feels comfortable with social gathering, then we can begin to really talk about cruise.”

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Donald suggested nobody really knows when that time will come.

“All the various brands have made assessments, and they put out new target dates [for resuming operation] and what not, [and] in the end we’re hoping that it will be sooner rather than later,” Donald said. “But we are going to be driven by not what we choose to do, but by what society is prepared to do in terms of social gathering.”

On that front, it may be significant that calls to reopen the United States and other destinations have grown in recent days. But how quickly such calls translate into a willingness to resume significant social gathering by a critical mass of society remains to be seen.

Carnival Corp. is the parent company of Carnival, Holland America, Princess and six more of the world’s biggest cruise brands. It accounts for about 45% of all cruises taken worldwide.

Governments have to be on board

As noted, the push to reopen society — and allow for at least limited social gathering — has been growing in some areas of the U.S. and beyond in recent days. But even if society in general becomes more comfortable with social gathering, that doesn’t mean cruising can resume immediately. Cruise lines still will need to get the OK from an array of local, state and federal officials, including health officials, in the places where their ships are based. That may not come right away.

In the U.S., for instance, health officials have expressed frustration with the cruise industry’s initial response to the coronavirus outbreak. They appear hesitant to let cruising resume without significant changes to the way the industry operates.

In an extended “no-sail” order issued last week for cruise ships sailing in U.S. waters, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ordered the industry to develop a far more robust plan for preventing outbreaks of coronavirus on ships than it had developed to date.

“Cruise ship travel markedly increases the risk and impact of the COVID-19 disease outbreak within the United States,” the agency said in the nine-page order, which was critical of the industry. “If unrestricted cruise ship passenger operations were permitted to resume, infected and exposed cruise ship cases would place healthcare workers at substantial increased risk.”

The CDC has broad powers to halt ships from sailing in U.S. waters if it determines a risk to the public health.

For now, the CDC’s “no-sail” order extends through July 24 — well beyond the dates that cruise lines have said they would resume sailings. Still, the order can be reversed by CDC director Robert Redfield, should he deem that warranted. It also will expire if the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services declares an end to the public health emergency surrounding the new coronavirus.

Keep in mind that U.S. officials aren’t the only ones with a say on whether cruise ships sail — and who is allowed to sail on them. For vessels sailing in Europe, Asia or other regions of the world, cruise lines will need the permission of various local authorities.

Rudi Schreiner, the president and cofounder of AmaWaterways, thinks river cruising in Europe could resume as early as June or July. But authorities in Europe may not allow Americans to resume traveling on river ships in Europe right away, he told TPG.

“Recovering European countries could turn away Americans for a time since they lag on the virus curve, and different parts of the U.S. are harder hit than others,” Schreiner said.

AmaWaterways has paused its operations worldwide through the end of June. The company markets voyages on 22 river ships in Europe as well as vessels in Asia and Africa.

The rebound won’t happen everywhere at once

One factor complicating the comeback of cruising is that some ports may remain closed to cruise ships for a time while others reopen, making a resumption of standard itineraries difficult.

Some major cruise destinations from the Bahamas to the South Pacific have been notably strict with their entry requirements since the coronavirus crisis began. They may be slow to open back up. Unlike the U.S., the Bahamas hasn’t even allowed its own citizens to return to the country during the crisis.

In last week’s conference call, Carnival Corp.’s Donald suggested cruising could resume at different times in different places, with only some vessels coming back initially.

Ships based in China, for instance, could be among the first to resume departures, if only because China has started relaxing social distancing rules ahead of other countries.

“Because of that — and that alone — it’s possible that China could be one of the first markets where cruise can be renewed,” Donald said. “There are other issues, though, not the least of which is where the cruise is going to go.”

The issue of which ports reopen, and when, is a big one for the cruise industry.

In response to a question from TPG, Donald suggested that even when cruising comes backs, the routings on the schedule for some ships would have to be revamped — at least for a few months.

“In the near term, once we start sailing, it’s going to be different because I doubt seriously all destinations will open simultaneously,” Donald said. “There’ll be different protocols and regulations and so on in one place versus another.”

Airlift is critical

Donald also noted the return of some cruise itineraries will be dependent on a resumption of an adequate amount of airlift to regional cruise hubs.

While many airlines have continued to fly during the coronavirus crisis, the total number of flights worldwide has plummeted, and some airlines already have indicated they will be slow to return to their old levels of operations. Some airlines may never come back.

As with the resumption of cruises, the resumption of an adequate schedule of flights worldwide is partly dependent on what travel restrictions various governments keep in place in the coming months.

“We do have a number of brands that are very reliant on airlift to get guests to the embarkation point, so we’ll have to wait and see,” Donald said. “We don’t know which destinations will open up when … until we see more movement, it’s hard to predict exactly what form and shape [the resumption of cruising] will take.”

Many industry watchers expect lines to initially offer more short sailings from “home ports” near major population centers that passengers can reach by car instead of plane. In addition to eliminating the need for a flight to reach them, shorter sailings from regional hubs will offer customers a way to dip their toes back into cruising without overly committing.

Already, Norwegian Cruise Line has announced that one of its ships, Norwegian Sun, will reposition to Port Canaveral, Florida, when cruising resumes to operate short three- to five-day-long voyages. The ship originally had been scheduled to spend much of the next five months operating much longer nine- to 12-night voyages out of Seattle to Alaska.

The bottom line, say industry watchers, is cruising could resume in fits and starts.

“When the time comes, dates of resumption will vary by cruise line, since … they will likely phase in ships at different rates,” McDaniel said. “It’s also likely we’ll see adjustments of certain itineraries to account for the varied return of tourism in port cities.”

The worst-case scenario

There’s a worst-case scenario floating around among industry watchers as to when cruising could resume: Not until late this year or even early 2021.

This sort of projection assumes the coronavirus outbreak isn’t well contained in the coming weeks and months, or is contained and then flares again and, as a result, health authorities such as the CDC conclude it’s too early to allow cruising to resume.

For now, this is an outlier scenario — one not many people expect. But even to those within the industry, it’s no longer unthinkable.

In recent weeks, the big publicly traded cruise companies have taken drastic actions to ensure they can survive just such a worst-case scenario. In early April, Carnival Corp. sold debt and equity at distressed prices in a move it said would give it enough liquidity to survive a shutdown lasting to the end of the year. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. — the parent company of Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises, Azamara and Silversea — last week laid off or furloughed more than a quarter of its U.S. staff.

The companies don’t expect such a worst-case scenario. But the point is, they no longer think the odds of such a scenario are zero.

Most Wall Street analysts who follow the cruise industry don’t expect such a dire outcome, either, even as they praise cruise companies for planning for the worst. Leisure analyst Harry Curtis of Instinet, for instance, is modeling a partial resumption of cruising by the middle of the third quarter of this year.

Curtis thinks the major cruise companies could be able to get half their fleets back into operation during the second half of the year.

Our best guess

So, where does all of the above leave us? Will cruising be resuming this summer? This fall? Could cruising really be on hold until early next year?

Like everybody else, I will start by saying it’s impossible right now to know for sure. If anybody tells you differently, don’t believe them.

But I do think it’s possible to offer a range of probability of the most likely outcomes. That’s how I think you should look at a question like this. There is no right answer. Just a range of possibilities, some more likely than others.

Given that caveat, I think the highest probability — let’s call it 60% — is that some cruising resumes by July or August. But it may not be as big a return to cruising as some cruise fans hope. I think there’s a smaller probability, maybe 30%, that cruising doesn’t resume in a meaningful way until the fall. That leaves 10% for the worst-case scenario, which is that cruising is on hold until 2021.

Like AmaWaterways’ Schreiner, I can see river cruising starting up relatively early, as by definition it’s a small-group activity — something health authorities will have an easier time approving. Even the biggest cruise vessels on many rivers have fewer than 100 cabins. River cruising also takes place within the borders of countries. In a worst-case situation where someone on a river ship falls ill, the logistics of responding to the situation won’t be nearly as complex for authorities as the process of responding to an outbreak on a big ocean ship.

I’m also betting some small oceangoing vessels will be able to resume operations this summer, too. I’m thinking of the sort of ships operated by the likes of Alaska specialist UnCruise Adventures and U.S.-focused American Cruise Lines. UnCruise Adventures offers intimate vessels that hold just 22 to 86 passengers. The smallest American Cruise Lines ships carry just 100 passengers.

In its “no-sail” order, the CDC notably exempted small cruise vessels designed to carry fewer than 250 passengers and crew, presumably deeming them less of a risk to the public health system. In theory, some of the ships operated by UnCruise Adventures and American Cruise Lines could begin operating in the coming weeks as some states begin lifting stay-at-home orders, though I don’t expect that. American Cruise Lines already has canceled all its sailings through May 31.

As for bigger ships, my best guess is the odds are in favor of some sort of tiptoe back into operations by late summer in several regions around the world. But, initially, they might just be short cruises aimed at a local crowd. In North America, that would mean quick trips out of ports such as Miami and Port Canaveral.

Additional resources for cruisers during the coronavirus outbreak:

Featured image courtesy of Royal Caribbean.