When will cruises resume? Cruising restarting or new setbacks? Celebrity Cruise Blog & Vlog

Let me start this article by stating that I do not have a crystal ball, however I compiled information from different sources that may provide hints as to when cruises may restart. If you are curious about what cruising may look like when it restarts please see the link at the bottom of this article for the article I wrote outlining the cruise line’s plan.

Current setbacks

Many cruise lines in the past two months have been calling more crew members back to work, however Norwegian Cruise Line has recently begun sending home some non-essential crew. It seems that cruise lines are awaiting guidance from the CDC in regards to test cruises according to an Article from Cruise Hive. Norwegian decided it was more cost effective to send crew home than to keep them on board.

When will cruises resume?

When could cruises restart is the question that everyone is asking and everyone has an opinion, but let's see what clues may give us insight to when cruises may resume.

Port Canaveral officials are hinting at cruising to return by July. Port Canaveral CEO Captain John Murray believes that the covid vaccine will be widely available. He also added on “The cruise industry took a hit and unfairly so. It didn’t get around the world as quickly as it did on cruise ships. It got around the world on airplanes ``''It’s time that we get this business back.” Murray believes his estimate is conservative and the port he manages has been shut to cruises since mid March 2020. This opinion is not based on any specific information from any cruise line. However he also stated “the reality given the pandemic right now, until those numbers start coming down, we just don’t see that this industry is going to get any attention that it needs to get restarted." Murray also believes when cruise lines restart they will do so with only one ship.

I recently watched a video by the Youtuber and travel agent Affluent Journeys which stated that a contact within Celebrity Cruise Line stated that test cruises should begin in March. He Also said that Celebrity’s ships will begin to sail in Europe in May.

How full will the ships be when they restart?

During an event with travel agents Dondra Ritzenthaler Senior Vice President of Sales, Trade Support & Service for Celebrity Cruises said "When we come back in May, we're going to start out like 50 to 60 percent occupancy. We're only going to go to those levels.", Ms. Ritzenthaler explained to travel agents. ""And then we're each time every month, we're going to go a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more towards when we get back to the end of the year, we'll go at one hundred percent occupancy."

Ms Ritzenthaler also alluded to the fact that restrictions will ease over time; "I also believe that what we do at the beginning when we come back, will look very different in December or January of next year." She said that no decision has been made yet regarding whether the vaccine will be required." Now we know that we're not going to be back into the water until May 1 [2021], and the shot, the vaccinations are coming so much more readily... We believe that Fauci and the WHO, the CDC, believe that vaccines will be readily available by May and June. Well if that happens, then the protocols that we've all been working on may very well change."

https://www.celebritycruisevlog.com/post/what-will-celebrity-s-cruises-look-like-when-they-restart