Hurricane damage may lead to surge in cruise demand

The phrase “a perfect storm” seems like it has been around forever. Used loosely, it denotes something really bad or unlucky.

In fact, the referenced storm happened 26 years ago on Nov. 1, 1991. Author Sebastian Junger popularized the phrase after interviewing a Boston weather forecaster for his 1997 book about a commercial fishing boat lost at sea.

Since Junger’s book, “The Perfect Storm,” it has been applied to any event where a situation is aggravated drastically by an exceptionally rare combination of circumstances, and has become somewhat cliched.

Some people have labeled this year’s combination of Atlantic hurricanes as a perfect storm, noting the rarity of three storms of category 4 or 5 intensity making landfall, and their record destructiveness.

But after every darkness comes a dawn. That’s what Brad Tolkin, co-CEO of World Travel Holdings, told agents in his address this week to the annual conference for CruiseOne/Dream Vacations and Cruises Inc. operators on the Harmony of the Seas.

Tolkin went further, saying that the 2018 cruise season may be the opposite of a perfect storm in the Caribbean. It may be “the perfect sunrise,” Tolkin said.

His logic has to do with the disparate ways that cruise vacations and land vacations come back after a destructive storm.

For anyone wanting a vacation this winter in St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. Maarten or San Juan, cruise has a big advantage. While cruise lines have been racing to return, and destinations hustling to get their cruise infrastructure repaired, land resorts will take longer, Tolkin said. That creates an opening for agents that predominantly sell cruises, such as those at CruiseOne and Cruises Inc.

“Cruise is going to have a phenomenal first quarter because there’s a certain amount of hotel inventory that doesn’t exist,” Tolkin said.

“Frenchman’s Reef in St. Thomas  we sell a lot of it. It’s a very popular resort. It’s gone until next year,” Tolkin said.

Add to this the pricing momentum provided by sales in 2017, a year in which almost everything except the weather seemed to go right for the cruise industry, and you have the makings of a perfect sunrise.

While it can be chancy to make such an optimistic forecast, I liked that phrase when I heard it. Let’s hope the forecast holds true.