What do you all think?
Considering how this virus hit cruise ships and in the past other diseases have also hit cruise ships, will they ever be the same?
I have only been on one 3 day cruise in my life so I really dont know.
I really dont know short of requiring all passengers and crew being required to have a medical release before boarding.
I think so. Cruise ships are a cheap way to go on vacation and for the most part the diseases that spread on them tend to be more minor like norovirus.
Our one cruise was lousy (and we were refunded half because of their fuckups) and if the industry returns to that standard, it should go away and die. YMMV.
Cruises will mostly be the same.
Airline travel has not been the same since 9-11. Security is much tighter, and that has not gone away. But before this virus it was still pretty simple to get on an airplane and travel half way around the world.
Similarly, cruises will have some new protocols in place that will not go away. Food stations might always be served by workers instead of self serve, and there will probably be a temperature check before you can start a cruise, maybe even some sort of swab. No visibly ill person will be allowed on board. What they will do with people who catch the flu just before a trip, I don’t know.
Isn’t the real question how confident consumers are? Some consumers will go rushing back, but my guess is that even with safeguards in place on these ships, many people won’t want to book cruises until and unless there’s a widely-available vaccine.
I do not think the comparison to air travel is apt. Airlines are primarily a mode for transportation, and few take a trip on a plane for fun. Cruises are just for fun - no one uses a ship for transportation any more.
I think the cruise industry is in for hard times. There is going to be too much capacity and not enough customers. I recon some cruise-liners will be sold or mothballed to stem hemorrhaging maintenance costs.
I agree that confidence is going to be key in any next step. People already associate norovirus with cruising, and now the recent images of sick cruise ships searching for a place that will allow them to dock will remain. That and the hysteria with news coverage featuring choppers hovering over the ships while in port trying to get some footage of people hanging out on their balcony. And stories of people trapped in their interior rooms with no windows while the ship is quarantined. The story about the baby getting dropped 11 stories keeps popping into the news cycle. Not good imagery for building confidence in cruising.
Sure, there will always be some customers who like cruising who will snap-up cheap fares, but I will be skeptical that people will be rushing back to cruises, and first time cruising will likely be very slow for a while, even with additional health precautions. I, for one, never did a cruise and not likely to start now.
It all depends on the long-term situation with COVID-19.
Some infectious diseases die out.
Some infectious diseases end up with a vaccine which keeps the disease in check.
Some infectious diseases continue as a major problem.
If it is the last cruise ships are going to do very poorly. If it is the 1st or 2rd cruise ships will recover.
In the California 49er Gold Rush, hundreds of ships carried myriads of eager prospectors to San Francisco - where the ships were abandoned, even the crews deserting for the gold fields. Many of those abandoned ships were turned into floating hotels. I foresee abandoned cruise ships taken over as cheap lodging or homeless shelters. Cruise fleet owners must adapt if they want to stay in business. Be useful or be ruined.
Kind of like those ideas but another: As floating, moored apartment complex’s in port cities where real estate is already in high demand like San Francisco. When you think about it in places like Florida lots of people already live on boats.
There’s a lot of new bookings on cruise ships for 2021. And that’s not counting the vast number of people who got credit for canceled cruises and will be taking make-up cruises.
Yeah, it’s a short term hit. But they’ll be back.
Just don’t ask me why.
You’re right, the comparison to air travel itself isn’t apt. A better comparison is to the airtravel/crowded vacation destination combo. Cruise lines will have a hard-time for a few months. As will many land-based resorts, Disney World etc. I mean, I’m not going to be any more comfortable flying to the Bahamas and spending a week at the Baha Mar than I am taking a one week cruise to the Bahamas.
I’ve said before that, at least in the short term, the cruise companies should repurpose some of their ships as hospital ships.
They should all go bankrupt. I have zero sympathy for any company who takes corporate handouts while flagging all their ships elsewhere to avoid US taxes. If they survive, that should be a requirement: If you aren’t flagged in the US, you can’t port in the US. Fuck 'em.
I agree. Not so much with the bankrupt part because of the disruption it would cause. But companies should be supported in an extreme emergency where they pay taxes.
How does this make any sense?
These ships aren’t designed as mobile hospitals in the first place. Their design makes it harder to treat patients, not easier. One of the last things you want to do with a lot of patients is isolate them out at sea. It’s a recipe for infecting all the people who go on board to treat them and for having lots of patients die.
Even the hospitals ships the US already has aren’t well designed for pandemics. Their current mission was originally to take non-COVID patients to take the load off onshore hospitals. After massive outcry, they were repurposed, but this halved the number of available beds and wasn’t exactly cheap.
If we have the resources to repurpose cruise ships, which are even less suited for the purpose, it’s easier/cheaper to build field hospitals on land. First, it’s a very round hole, square peg kind of idea. But secondly, plague ships have a terrible track record and history.
It was? All the basic steps are pretty much the same. You always had to go through customs before if you do now. There was security before. You need a ticket.
My recollection is it was Flight 800 in 1996 that changed how airport security was run. Before then, unticketed people could go to the gate to meet incoming flights, and there were no gate security procedures, though I think I remember seeing metal detectors at gates before then. After that, 9/11 ushered in the TSA which ran airport security going forward, where before it was private companies and contractors. Ironically the Lockerbie plane bombing in 1988 did not result in any significant changes to airport security.
Isn’t it already law that foreign flagged ships cannot visit two US ports in a row? Also, how does that make sense that a foreign flagged ship be forbidden to visit a US port? Now, if you’re talking only about those ships operated by companies taking money from the US federal government, then that makes sense.
I wonder if there is any realistic way to make cruise ships different. Specifically, to make crew quarters different, with isolated bunking. And laundries and kitchens different, so they aren’t all working in sardine-like conditions.
Ah.
I don’t really see this because if it was economical, old cruise ships would have been used for this purpose over the past decades. Instead they are broken up.
My wife and I have zero interest in being cooped up on a ship. However, when people are again willing to fill indoor sports arenas, I suppose they will again be willing to go on cruises.
Despite the risk of catching something, a cruise is a safe vacation. It is safer than the road trips my wife and I prefer.