Carnival cruises CEO says ‘We’re all coming back.’ When will that include Charleston?
By the end of the year, Carnival Cruise Line will have relaunched 15 of its cruise ships from seven ports around the U.S.
Not one of them is going to be sailing from Charleston.
The Carnival Sunshine, the only ship from a major cruise line that departs from South Carolina, isn’t expected to set sail from the Palmetto State until at least 2022. Carnival Cruise Line has repeatedly delayed the ship’s return to sailing even while it has let other ships depart from Florida, Texas, California and Maryland. Carnival Cruise Line has not yet responded to questions regarding why it has not brought back trips leaving from Charleston.
On Monday, Carnival Corporation CEO Arnold Donald spoke during a panel in Miami moderated by Sun News reporter Chase Karacostas about the recovery of the cruise industry and travel at large as the COVID-19 recovery continues and the U.S. heads into winter.
“People know, in the end, we’re all coming back,” Donald said during the panel. “Now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We know the distance to that light is shorter. We still don’t know exactly how long that tunnel is.”
The cruise industry has been the hardest hit sector of the nation’s tourism economy and has been put under some of the strictest rules for restarting by government regulators. At the start of the pandemic, cruise ships around the world, including many owned by Carnival, were major sources of COVID-19 spread and resulted in thousands of people getting stuck in ports around the globe as their home governments struggled to figure out what to do with them.
Donald said he never worried about the cruise industry’s recovery, though the shutdown was particularly hard. Even when Carnival cut its operating costs as low as possible, it was still losing $500 million a month when no ships were running.
Once cruises could resume, Donald said he believed there would be immediate interest. Many people, he said, were still traveling to port cities or calling Carnival when much of the world shut down in March 2020, hoping that their trip hadn’t been canceled. It showed him and his company that once cruises were allowed to return, there would be a strong contingent of people seeking to book.
“There were a lot of people ready to cruise. In fact, when we shut down, people were upset,” Donald said. “Demand is robust. Our second half bookings next year are ahead of where they were pre-COVID.”
Donald’s mindset was shared by much of the tourism industry. This year, Myrtle Beach and other vacation destinations saw an unprecedented number of travelers coming arriving at their doorstep, many of them sick of being stuck at home for the year and flush with government stimulus money.
One of the biggest hurdles to returning to cruising has been how to handle COVID-19. All cruise ships now have onboard testing and the ability to temporarily quarantine passengers and crew. Donald said the cruise industry’s experience with past epidemics and pandemics such as Zika and Ebola prepared them for what they have to do today.
“I could not be more proud of of our people for their dedication and commitment and super high-level execution against the constantly changing environment,” Donald said. “Every week, the rules change. We get hundreds of thousands of calls a day because the rules keep changing everywhere in the world, and people have to adapt to manage that.”
Major cruise lines didn’t begin to sail from U.S. ports until midsummer, and in most cases they have to meet extremely high vaccination standards — more than 95% — for passengers and crew. As the coronavirus delta variant “reared its ugly head,” Carnival also instituted a requirement than even vaccinated passengers must get tested for COVID-19 within 72 hours of departure.
Unvaccinated passengers are allowed to cruise but might need a doctor’s note explaining why they cannot be vaccinated. Many unvaccinated passengers must also purchase travel insurance in case they become infected and need to be transported home. Travel insurance rates can vary but typically cost hundreds of dollars. Unvaccinated guests are also not allowed to go onshore by themselves when the ship docks during a trip. They are allowed to take limited “bubble tours” onshore that could sell out and do not allow for unscheduled excursions to gift shops, restaurants and the like.
While the restaurant and airline industries, for example, have seen pushback and even instances of violence when it comes to COVID-19 mitigation measures like vaccine mandates and mask wearing, Donald said he isn’t worried about that on cruises. Cruise ships often have more rules than most other types of travel in order to keep everyone safe.
“Of course, when you’re selling to that many people, you always have a few outliers, but mainly they understand. They’re used on a cruise ship to going to destinations where the rules are different for everything,” Donald said.
One of the biggest changes Donald wants to see regarding travel and COVID-19 is better coordination between the federal government and local and state governments, as well as coordination among governments internationally. However, that is a hard ask. For instance, in Florida, where many of Carnival’s ships are based, Gov. Ron DeSantis has made it harder for COVID-19 restrictions to be enforced and has led the charge against some of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s rules for the cruise industry’s return.
In South Carolina, local and state officials have also often opposed vaccine mandates.
In light of the discord between states and the federal government when it comes to COVID policy, Donald said it needs to be easier for individuals to follow protocols, like having an app that shows them local rules to follow as well as stores their vaccine card.
“We need to focus on the individual,” Donald said. “When we say, ‘Oh, if it’s this country, then we won’t take people from that country’ — the fact is that individuals are vaccinated or they’ve been tested ... they’re as safe as any other individual that was vaccinated or tested.”
As for the cruise industry’s return to South Carolina, Charleston’s Carnival Sunshine is one of just five ships in Carnival’s fleet that still lacks a specific date for when it will return to the high seas.
“We are making slight adjustments to our timeline to take into account supply chain realities and ensure that our destination and shore excursion offerings can meet the strong demand we are seeing from our guests,” Carnival Cruise Line president Christine Duffy said in a press release last month. “Our teams, ship and shore, are prepared to continue delivering on our great guest experience and manage all health and safety protocols.”
This story was originally published October 5, 2021 at 1:21 PM with the headline "Carnival cruises CEO says ‘We’re all coming back.’ When will that include Charleston?."
