Cruise industry says ships are safe. Do experts agree?

When the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, there was practically no worse place to be than a cruise ship. Today, as COVID-19 still lingers around the world, cruiseindustry leaders are making a bold claim: Cruising is not only safe, but it’s safer than other kinds of travel and vacations.

Public-health experts consulted by the Miami Herald agreed to some extent but with caveats.

At the SeaTrade cruise conference last month in Miami Beach, executives promoted their ships as the safest vacation option because they can mandate vaccines and testing unlike with vacations in which travelers take airplanes, stay in hotels and dine at restaurants.

“There will be no safer way of traveling once we truly start cruising,” said Emre Sayin, the CEO of Global Ports Holding, the world’s largest cruiseport operator. “And that will become an advantage.”

The claim was echoed by many other industry leaders at the conference, which is the industry’s largest gathering.

Richard Fain, the CEO of Royal Caribbean, said, “Unlike almost any other place you can think of whether it’s restaurants, hotels, entertainment venues ... we control the environment.”

Arnold Donald, the CEO of Carnival Corporation,

agreed, stating that their safety protocols were “much more rigorous than equivalent or similar land-based activities.”

In an interview with the Herald, Tom McAlpin, the CEO of Virgin Voyages, Richard Branson’s newly

The cruise industry says cruising is one of the safest travel options despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Miami Herald asked epidemiologists what they thought about the claim.