The Australian cruise market can’t reopen soon enough for the CEO of Carnival Corporation, the leisure travel giant with a nine-cruise line portfolio that includes Carnival, P&O and Princess.
“Australia is one of the most thriving cruise markets in the world,” said Arnold Donald by phone in a rare one-on-one print media interview from his St. Louis residence. “It’s had double-digit growth in cruise for something like 10 years in a row – I’ve lost count. It’s a great market for cruise, certainly with our P&O and Princess brands.”
When cruising returns from the months-long suspension of operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, “we’ll be back and elated to sail all our ships that come into Australia because, like with every other market in the world, there’s a large population of people who are underpenetrated for cruise,” Mr Donald said.
Reasons for Carnival’s corporate captain sounding upbeat are not without merit. For one, even under the lingering dark cloud of the fatal Ruby Princess calamity, the end of an industry-wide shutdown appears to be within sight. Cruise lines worldwide are now setting specific dates for resuming service, most in time to salvage the Australian winter.
Raising anchor with passengers aboard is the first step. Much more needs to happen before the industry can chest-beat over a recovery. But in that respect, the land down under is primed to make a bigger and faster comeback than many markets, according to Donald.
“There’s possibilities that Australia will come back sooner than other regions because it’s had less impact from the pandemic than some other places in the world,” he said.
Echoing the big boss’ optimism is P&O, which on May 4 joined sister Carnival in announcing a return to operations in Australia and New Zealand after Aug. 31.
“Australia has to date been very successful in flattening the curve of COVID-19, and the nation is working hard to maintain this positive momentum to help achieve economic recovery,” P&O told Cruise Passenger, citing the $5 billion annual contribution the industry makes to the national, state and regional economies. “Australia is also in a beneficial position with an extremely long coastline and numerous cruise destinations that could support a resumption of domestic cruise itineraries as a prelude to a full restoration of cruise operations.”
As the cruise industry gears up for a grand reopening, Carnival’s CEO acknowledges the added challenge of its Princess brand, which during the COVID-19 pandemic has seen its name splashed more in the news section than travel section. In addition to the Ruby Princess, which has been linked to more than 20 coronavirus deaths and 600 infections across Australia, passengers on the Diamond Princess and Grand Princess have accounted for more than 800 total COVID-19 cases and 10 deaths.
“With Princess, despite some of the recent noise and investigations going on, we’ll get through all of that. We welcome the investigations, and we know our top priority and responsibility is compliance and environmental protection, health, safety and wellbeing, and we act in good faith in that regard. Coming out of that we’re expecting for Australia to be the robust cruise market it’s been and return to whatever the new normal is.”
Normal will surely have a different look after the current crisis passes, according to Donald, noting that changes to the cruise experience depend greatly on global alignment around the epidemiology of COVID-19.
“What will be different will be based on what we learn over the next several weeks about what really mitigates the spread of COVID-19,” he said. “Today, there’s controversy around everything – on testing, temperature scanning …. So, rather than rush to a bunch of optical things that look good, we’re going to let the medical and science communities determine what should be put into protocol or regimens that would really help mitigate the spread of this particular virus.”
When cruise ships return to passenger service after the expected five-month shutdown, at a minimum crew members will engage in deep cleaning, a medical professional will be on board and passengers will be reminded to sanitise their hands at stations placed in common areas. Those measures, along with expected good-hygiene practices, are standard operation and how the cruise industry has battled norovirus, Ebola, SARS, MERS and other outbreaks, some more successfully than others.
As a novel virus, COVID-19 is new territory for an industry that thrives on taking passengers to exotic places. The rapidly spreading disease found its way aboard roughly 50 more cruise ships between the first reported onboard case in early February and the mass shutdown.
“The industry voluntarily put a pause on cruising before anyone else did – before hotels, restaurants – before anything else,” Donald said. “There was very little knowledge in February and March. We aggressively addressed it.”
Navigating through the Fog
Inherent with precedent-setting times is the great unknown, a truism not lost on Donald. When asked what success will look like for the cruise industry post-pandemic and when can it be claimed, he answered with an implied asterisk.
“Success looks like happy, engaged, confident guests having the time of their lives filling phenomenal memories – that the crew is happy, engaged and honouring our highest responsibilities, which are compliance, environmental protection and the health, safety and well-being of our guests, of the people and places we touch and, of course, our people shoreside and shipboard.”
Then came the “but.”
“But,” Donald continued, “the practical reality is this is a global pandemic. This is much, much bigger than cruise – bigger than even travel and tourism as an entire category. We have to fit into what works for society, so, clearly, when people are comfortable with social gathering, which a cruise is by definition, that creates the possibility for cruise.”
With the rebound of cruising being dependent on society’s attitude about social gathering, Donald is pleased to see strides toward a return to people assembling.
“You can see what’s happening around the world right now,” he said. “There are a number of places opening – like in Australia they’re opening up some beaches and talking about opening up schools, and other examples. You can see society starting to move to some level of social gathering.”
Although most of the world is in the infancy of ending social distancing, Donald said early efforts provide the cruise industry with learnings as approaches across the globe are compared.
“If people are willing to go to concerts or football stadiums or airport terminals or subway stations, then you have preconditions of them being willing to go on a cruise,” he said. “Cruising has to fit in with how society overall views social gathering.”
Harkening back to Carnival Corporation’s highest responsibility, the health and safety of its guests and crew across all its brands, Donald stressed the importance of the scientific and medical communities aligning on how best to move forward with the least amount of risk in spreading the virus.
“Using that as the basis, we’ll then be able to talk about cruise,” he said. “We’ll find the right balance as the world moves forward. It’s just going to be a little rocky road until we do.”
It’s a rocky road with shipping lanes not found on any nautical chart.
“This is a once in a several-hundred-year type of event that in many ways is devastating,” Donald said. “I don’t think anybody expected most of the world to go into shutdown. Stay at home, shelter in place, whatever you want to call it, the bottom line is it’s had a massive global impact in terms of reaction to this pandemic.
“Millions and millions and millions of people out of jobs, and governments writing unprecedented checks trying to support their citizenry as commerce comes to a screeching halt. There’s been nothing like that where the entire world goes on stand-down. It’s unprecedented.”
Despite so many question marks floating in the sea, the CEO said he is confident his industry will return like cruisers to a buffet line. He cited the large base of loyal supporters who made up the bulk of the 30 million who cruised last year, and he’s seeing strong demand for bookings through 2021. A comeback will not be without its challenges, however.
“I think in the early going there will be enough people who love cruising to fill the ships,” Donald said. “There’s no question that with the amount of media attention around cruising, there are people who have never done it having second thoughts at this point in time. But consistent delivery of experience and exceeding expectations has always been our formula. The industry was wildly successful before this and I’m quite confident we will return to that level of success over time.”
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I think it’s great that cruise ships will come back, I have a cruise booked for Sept on splendor, we are supposed to pay the remaining amount at the end of June, my question is .. although the liners are ready to come, will the Australian government let them back in, my cruise is from Sydney to cairns, at this stage I can’t drive across the border into Queensland , how are the cruise ships going to get around this
I was a passenger on the Carnival Splendour which set sail from Sydney on March 11th. We were lucky to have the ABC news on the ship in which it was good to know what was going on with the coronavirus & the world. In the first couple of days Prime Minister Scott Morrison was looking forward to watch a game of football. I was very happy at the time upon hearing this which made me feel very comfortable travelling with a large crowd on the ship. Then 2 or 3 days later everything changed. No football & instead Scott Morrison ordered all international cruise ships to at first be out for 30 days at sea before they can return back to Australia. It then got changed again for obvious reasons that all cruise ships to return to Australia as soon as possible. Our trip was shortened by 2 nights & we were suppose to dock in Sydney on the morning March 19th in which the Ruby Princess took our place. It was to my personal opinion that cruise ships with the sick needed to disembark to get sick passengers to hospital as soon as possible. Because the cross infection in Australia at that time was low risk it seemed at the time safe to do what officials thought. The general public were completely unaware how serious this coronavirus is. If we did know the cruises would have all cancelled & all passengers would have cancelled. All passengers took the chance including myself. When I was on Carnival Splendour the staff had a new standard on Board. Guests were not allowed to touch serving food utensils. Only staff with gloves on were to serve. Cleaning & wiping were done very frequently. I was lucky I was on a clean ship. I feel it was the takeover from the Prime Minister to other senior authorities on every level with no warning on how, what & who is responsible. Infection control is something that cannot be learnt overnight.
We were on Costa Fortuna cruise out of Singapore on 3.3.20. This 14 day cruise should have been cancelled! Singapore was in lockdown when we arrived on 1.3.20. We left Singapore and floated for 8 days as we were rejected from all the ports that the captain tried to dock in. We were then treated like lepers, hoarded onto a bus directly from the ship, our luggage put onto a truck. We had NO correspondence from the cruise company that we booked with, to ascertain if we were ok, on arrival back in Australia. Our 14 day cruise was cut short and Costa advised the media that we were all medically checked whilst on the ship. That is incorrect. We never had a temperature check at any time. Only at the hotel in Singapore prior to boarding the ship. This cruise package we booked and paid for in May 2019!
We have been offered a credit! When we could use this, nobody knows. We are not in a position to travel overseas anytime soon.
People need to stop blaming cruise lines for virus outbreaks, the infected got on the ships some people knowingly I’ll. More people were infected travelling through airports and on planes then cruise ships but no one seems to address that issue. Funny how only 3 ships out of a possible 600 had infections but but hundreds of thousand of infected people spread through out the globe by air travel , buses and trains.
I will cruise again as soon as possible, the industry will recover as ships have already taken masses of bookings.
stop blaming the cruise industry….if you don’t want to cruise that’s fine but there are a lot more that do…..no one forces you to do it…it’s your choice…..I would rather be on a cruise ship than flying half way around the world for 17 plus hours on an enclosed plane with people sitting on top of each other…..the cruise ships didn’t bring the virus here, people did….so blame the people that don’t feel the need to be hygienic….. but good luck in finding them as there are billions of them world wide and you will never know who they are. The government seems to be more concerned with the cruise ships than the nursing homes in our country which have killed more people…..they need to get their priorities in order first.
I can’t wait to go cruising again have a carnival cruise booked in January hope you guys start up again asap
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It will be a very long time before cruising would be attractive to me again. Not only the Coronavirus issues but people are becoming very aware of the environmental issues not being addressed. A lot of “sanitising” needs to be done. Those with cruise credits will want to use them and the current style of cruising on offer, more and more, caters for the budget traveller. The gloss is definitely off cruising.
This deserves a good Aussie expression. “Tell ’em their dreaming.”
The fact that we’ve done OK with CV19 is as good a reason to keep excluding cruise ships. Not a reason to let them back in. The one ship – Ruby Princess – was responsible for about 10% of Australia’s cases.
I don’t care who did or did not say what to who and when before The Ruby Princess docked. If Princess is so great at Customer Care (as they keep claiming) , then they would never have accepted NSW clearance given on their first submission as still OK for their amended / second submission. Having lodged a second report, they knew the significance of it. They should have imposed their OWN restrictions, etc and acted properly of their own accord. THAT’S what a quality cruise line would have done.
The fact that a ship may arrive virus free does not mean anything. Just takes one new passenger to come onboard, or one crew member not showing symptoms, with CV19 (innocently or knowingly or recovered and unaware still infectious, etc.) and no matter the best of intentions and practices, there can be an outbreak.
Will these cruises be exclusively for Australians? (Maybe and could be enforced.) Will their staff be only Australians? (Nup! Usually from 30-50 different countries) Will they only visit Australian ports or places proven to be CV19 free? (Nup – no-one knows how to prove that even if everyone is regularly tested. We don’t know who can remain infectious, etc. Just so many unknowns.) Will it only be Australian ports? (Nup – because then they will have to comply with Australian Labour laws, etc. Looks like one intended cruise will dock in one overseas port but may not let anyone off. So don’t breath that air that comes over the ship?) Will they screen all passengers who get off at a port as they come back on board? (Not in any of the new protocols I’ve seen so far.)
We’ve cruised with Cunard, Princess, RCL and NCL in many different places, on their flagships and other ships. Some wonderful memories (but not for QM2).
But until we can get CV19 travel insurance cover (which insurers won’t touch for many legitimate reasons) why should we take a risk the insurers won’t touch?
So here is the challenge to the cruise industry. If it’s so safe now, put your money where your mouth is and provide a CV19 add on travel insurance cover.
BTW Sheila – Princess Australia want 90 days to do a refund. Think that might only be to process / approve / calculate. Then add on extra to actually pay it. If you booked via an agent, add on some more time – months maybe? Despicable. In Europe RCL are doing refunds within a few weeks! And still,our European friend complained on how long it took!
First thing is making sure medical facilities are affordable…obviously if it’s $450 not a lot of people will go to the doctor on board so really who knows who is unwell…my family’ decided not to pay the balance of a cruise supposedly going in June so lost $900 for the three of them…I definitely think they should receive some credit on a future cruise…
If the government hadn’t chased of the Pacific Explorer a couple of weeks ago we would have had a cruise ship that was completely virus free ready to sail not the ships have to go through all the quarenteen again. How bright was that.
The way things are at the moment I think Mr Donald’s thoughts may be wishful thinking. Even though Australia has an enormous coastline currently two of the states borders are closed and who knows when they may open. Just consider the length of the WA coast line (Half of Australia almost). Do people only want to sail from maybe Darwin to Melbourne? Currently our late September with the Sun is still going ahead but when will Australia allow us to travel overseas and when will we allow ships that have been to foreign ports back in? WHO KNOWS?
It would take a great deal of persuasion for me to ever cruise with Princess again and i have completed a lot of cruises from Australia with them .Iwas a passenger on the ruby princess and i got that virus. Iam still recovering and i never want it again i can tell you ,my husband and i are still waiting for our refund and i am assured that it will be sent ,we shall see.We will then make our minds up whether we give your cruise company another try.The medical facilities need to be improved with the appointment of a proper docter for starters!