A big step towards cruise recovery

Joel Katz is the Managing Director Australasia of Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA).

THE latest health initiatives announced by CLIA cruise lines (CW yesterday) are an important landmark along our industry’s path to recovery.

Together with the measures announced by other member cruise lines recently, they show the lengths our sector is going to in creating one of the most comprehensive COVID-19 responses of any industry.

The calibre of medical experts engaged, together with the breadth of health measures being developed and announced, proves that cruise lines are serious about maintaining safety as the highest priority and earning the confidence of governments globally.

There is still work to be done and medical understanding of this virus continues to evolve.

But these latest advances by cruise lines will support CLIA’s work to aggregate the health protocols of individual operators to create an industry-wide ocean cruise policy that can be enacted globally.

This is the framework we will use to hold detailed discussions with governments in Australia and elsewhere in our region, so that we can open the way to resumption.

By putting these detailed plans on the table, we can show how cruise operations can resume in a careful, phased approach.

It’s still too soon to specify details, but we envisage this will involve a door-to-door concept with precautions and protocols in place from the time of booking right through until after a passenger returns home.

We also expect it will involve a staged approach, with initial operations restricted to short local cruises and domestic itineraries for Australians only while borders remain closed, and then further afield when the trans-Tasman bubble comes to fruition.

Already, we are engaged with health authorities and governments to ensure they understand the work underway, as well as the impact of the cruise suspension on travel agents and other tourism businesses.

Ultimately, we will be guided by the experts and the authorities on the timing of our resumption, but thanks to the extensive work underway we are now closer to translating this into a global approach that can bring confidence back to cruising.