Rough seas for cruise biz
They’re a big business in the Atlantic region.
In 2019, Halifax was planning for 192 cruise ship visits and 320,000 passengers. For 2020, the expected number of visits jumps to 198. Saint John is expecting 89 visits in 2020. St. John’s is expecting 24 of the vessels. Charlottetown’s looking at 93 port visits in 2020.
The cruise visits, municipal leaders insist, bring new money to the cities involved – and quickly. They’re the kind of tourism that might not float all boats, but they do help certain segments of the economy, from taxis to local sightseeing companies to some retail operations.
But the current coronavirus outbreak is showing an interesting side to cruise ships – and one that the industry itself may have to find a way to overcome.
The Diamond Princess, a sister ship of one of the vessels scheduled to make its way to several Atlantic Canadian ports in the summer of 2020, is currently holed up in Japan in quarantine. One person who had left the vessel tested positive for the coronavirus after falling ill; now, there is a burgeoning number of cases on the vessel.
Since then, 174 cases have been diagnosed. Passengers were confined to their cabins, except for an hour a day on deck.
Another cruise vessel, the Westerdam, which left Hong Kong less than three weeks ago, had been unable to find a port willing to accept it, even though there are no confirmed cases on board. Cambodia finally agreed to allow the vessel to dock, after five other countries refused to allow it to enter their ports.
Holland America, which owns the Westerdam, has offered full refunds for passengers on the voyage, and has cancelled the vessel’s next cruise. The company also said, “We are assessing the impact of current port restrictions in Asia on cruises departing Feb. 29 or later.”
Ships have always been seen as hotbeds for opportunistic infections; close quarters and shared dining facilities bred mass illness for so long that vessels actually had a yellow and black flag to fly to warn of plague on board, or a simple yellow flag to warn of quarantine.
In more modern times, the virulent digestive illness known as norovirus has been a frequent – and stunningly gregarious – visitor on some cruises, giving guests a holiday experience they are likely never to forget. It’s also proved to be remarkably difficult to eradicate, even after passengers leave an affected vessel.
This is not to suggest that floating plague-ships are bearing down on the Atlantic coast – far from it. But the cases are bad press, as well as a direct expense. The industry could take some fiscal bodyblows, with impacts that could easily reach us.