‘LOVELY TO BE BACK ONBOARD’ - PRINCESS CRUISE SHIPS RETURN TO SEA

 The Guardian 7 August 2021 - by Gwyn Topham

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Robin Utrecht/REX/Shutterstock

The first Princess cruise ships are venturing back onto the water – 18 months after the quarantined Diamond Princess became a grim harbinger of the pandemic – in a symbolic moment for a sector hit hard and early by the Covid crisis.

“Initially it was quite emotional, because we haven’t been sailing for over 500 days,” says Tony Roberts, the UK vice-president for Princess Cruises. “The moment we welcomed the first guests onboard, it felt like we’d come full circle.”

Regal Princess spent the early part of this week sailing out for a three-night jaunt from Southampton, while a sister ship, Majestic US, returned safely from a week’s trip to Alaska.

“There are differences. You’re wearing masks when you’re moving round the ship. But it felt lovely to be back onboard,” says Roberts.

An even bigger sign of hope for the British cruise industry was the signal from the government that international cruises could now depart from these shores. Short domestic sailings have been operating, with limited passenger numbers, since early summer on other lines, including P&O, Saga and MSC. However, most trips had no ports of call over their short duration: for colossal cruise ships, that’s the equivalent of being stuck in an urban flat with brief permitted periods of exercise.

The UK’s wider, fluctuating travel rules – which can require quarantine after certain foreign port calls – mean lines are not rushing to sail on new itineraries immediately. Neither is the government giving cruising a ringing endorsement: it warns that the “confined setting enables Covid-19 to spread faster than it is able to elsewhere”, and that affected ships “have previously been denied permission to dock or to disembark passengers, [with] serious implications”.

© Provided by The Guardian The Diamond Princess at Yokohama port in Japan with 3,000-plus passengers on board forced to quarantine in February 2020. Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

CLIA, the cruise industry association, says it has provided large amounts of data to Public Health England and government departments to prove it is managing the situation. Operators have also signed a memorandum of understanding that cruise lines will bear the costs of repatriation if necessary.

According to Ben Bouldin, the Royal Caribbean vice-president and chair of CLIA UK, lines have agreed deals to disembark all guests if needed, removing the spectre of ships again stranded offshore, while customers will only take “bubble” shore excursions – organised trips – rather than wandering independently at ports of call.

The path to recovery has been painstaking. Skeleton crews kept the ships serviced while anchored offshore, during a pause that Roberts originally thought would last two months: “We’ve been building up the crew and they’ve been building up the new protocols; many of them have been onboard for a few months, coming from over 30 countries.”

The crew will almost outnumber passengers. Princess has started with very low occupancy – about 40% on Regal, which has 1,400 of 3,560 berths booked – even after the lifting of government restrictions. “We’re making sure the protocols are working so we’re not pushing the capacity – it’s important that we build up gradually,” says Roberts.

Only the double-vaccinated can travel, with tests on top for every passenger before boarding at Southampton. Technology on Princess will play a role, with passengers carrying a contactless key that doubles as an opt-in tracking device that can show when cabins are occupied or restaurants or theatres are busy. Restrictions mean that while passengers can have a socially distanced martini from the 50 varieties on offer at the Crooner’s bar, they cannot jump in the hot tub with couples outside their bubble.

Customer confidence is critical – but apparently, largely high. “Clearly there are people who think, actually this isn’t for me any more – but others think it’s quite possibly one of the safest ways to travel because of the additional measures in place,” says Roberts.

Notable ambassadors are David and Sally Abel, an Oxfordshire couple who were stranded onboard the Diamond Princess during the initial outbreak and then hospitalised in Japan after contracting Covid. They have booked at least five more Princess cruises, starting with a British “seacation” next month and four in various corners of the globe next year. David Abel told the BBC this week: “It’s a wonderful way of life … We really feel it’s very safe provided passengers are double-vaxxed.”

© Provided by The Guardian Images of the Princess Diamond in quarantine in Yokohama became an early and grim harbinger of the pandemic. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

Such loyalty is not unique, Roberts says. “David and Sally are a great example of people who love cruise … And while they had a pretty harrowing experience, their overriding sense is that they were caught up in a global pandemic, not something specific to cruise.

“Obviously we’ve given a lot of refunds and credit notes, but they are certainly using them – we’ve just put 2023 on sale because we’ve seen such strong demand.” New customers are also booking at the same or higher rates as before Covid, he adds.

Anchored ships meant significant costs, as well as no revenue. Princess’s parent company, Carnival, put out some bleak trading updates during the pandemic, racking up billions in losses, selling off six ships and at one point warning that demand may never recover.

Roberts says he remains optimistic, even if the restart is slow: “We get back to the point where it makes more sense to have ships operating than not fairly quickly, but we’re a long way off the levels we would have been before.”