The year 2020 will be a year that many people want to erase from memory as soon as possible. The forecasts for 2021 look good with a vaccine approved in many countries and vaccination programs underway.
But what about the cruise industry? Is there reason to be hopeful for the coming year, or are there still many pitfalls that the intersections will have to avoid?
We look at what challenges 2021 will present, what intersections will have to do to overcome adversity and how long financial experts think it will take before the industry at industry levels is ahead of COVID.
Will the vaccines make the industry safe?
Many worldwide, the arrival of vaccines is the savior of the shipping industry. However, this seems unlikely. The thing is, cross lines have enough challenges to overcome that vaccines have little impact on.
For now, vaccination programs are in the early stages of surgery, and according to experts, it will take many months before a complete vaccination program is launched worldwide. The best scenarios to reach an effective virus stop level are autumn or winter 2021.
For cruise lines, the procedures and regulations on which they have placed themselves and the procedures implemented by the CDC do not disappear in one year.
Ships that sail with lower capacity, 100% test, take social distance, wear mask, and electronic surveillance of passengers on board the foreseeable future will exist.
As they are seen by the uninformed as a floating petri dish, the cruise industry will in future be under extreme scrutiny of the press, government agencies and the public. Even after completing a complete vaccination program, it seems likely that cruise lines will prefer to maintain at least some of the features that have been implemented.
Booking numbers are high, but it’s a fragile balance
Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Carnival, MSC, and many more cruise lines have all recently made statements the booking numbers for 2021 are high. And these numbers not only include the people who have been booked from pre-canceled trips; many are new discussions.
This is excellent news and confirms that the public’s confidence in the shipping industry has not disappeared. The saying that good memories last longer is a valid argument here. But the balance is fragile.
The cruise industry will have to get 100% right all the time in the next twelve months if it wants this confidence to stay high. Incidents on board a small vessel such as Seadream 1rightly or wrongly, has the potential to destroy all the hard work that has been done.
The fact is that the news of a false positive place in the world would never get so much traction in the mainstream media if the false positive on board Quantum of the Seas; this alone should be a valuable lesson for all cruise lines.
Boating lines have a long way to go
It is incredibly difficult to make predictions about when the cruise industry will recover while the ships are not yet sailing. However, it would take years before we see a recovery in the pro-covid times is right.
The number of passengers in 2020 is expected to exceed the million million passengers who sailed in 2019. For now, projections are made by Statista shows that passenger numbers are unlikely to exceed 17 million passengers.
It will be 2024 before we will see anything like the numbers we saw in 2019. With ships sailing at 60-70% in 2021, even that number looks optimistic.
Boating lines will have to maintain a balance between two extremes in 2021. On the one hand, the sailing lines must ensure that all measures, protocols and regulations are carried out correctly.
Then the travel lines must also ensure that guests can enjoy their holiday. Not a single guest waits to be placed on a ship, while guests in resorts worldwide can take vacations.
Also read: 15 best new vessels to start sailing in 2021
The resumption of shipping in Europe, Asia and the Middle East are all positive points on the road to recovery. However, the absolute majority of voyages worldwide take place in the USA. Until the virus is sufficiently limited and ships sail as usual, we can not say that the road to recovery has been paved.
The road to recovery is, as is often the case, long and difficult. It seems that the road to the cruise industry is even longer and more difficult than other industries, and that is the way to the whole world.
