Carnival Cruise Line won’t return to St. Thomas, St. Maarten until January

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Cruise giant Carnival is taking it slow when it comes to returning to hurricane-ravaged St. Thomas and St. Maarten.

While Royal Caribbean is resuming stops at the still-recovering destinations next month, Carnival president Christine Duffy on Friday said the line would wait until early 2018 to restart calls. 

In a letter to customers posted on the Carnival website, Duffy set “the beginning of January” as a time frame for a return to St. Thomas and St. Maarten. She also set a hard date of Nov. 30 for the line’s resumption of calls at the hurricane-hit port of San Juan, Puerto Rico and said calls at Grand Turk would resume in less than two weeks. 

Hurricane Irma caused widespread damage across St. Thomas and St. Maarten in early September. St. Thomas also was affected by Hurricane Maria, which hit the island later in September and also slammed Puerto Rico and Grand Turk.  

More:  Cruises to St. Thomas to resume in November | FEMA charters Carnival ship to house relief workers in Virgin Islands 

U.S. Virgin Islands governor Kenneth Mapp on Friday said St. Thomas was preparing for as many as 25 cruise ship calls in November, starting with the arrival of Royal Caribbean’s Adventure of the Seas on Nov. 10. 

The government of the U.S. Virgin Islands has been racing to restore the territory’s top tourist areas so it can reopen to visitors. Tourism accounts for an out-sized portion of the Virgin Islands economy, and the livelihoods of thousands of Virgin Islands residents are dependent on a quick return of visitors, officials have said.