Cruising projects slow return in 2021 with 50% ship capacity
Officials at Port Canaveral don’t know when the cruise lines will actually return to sailing, but that didn’t stop them from putting forth a budget plan for 2021.
Part of that projects no cruises from the port until at least January, and at that point, only four ships sailing at 50% capacity - one ship each.
The port is home to five brands, though, including Disney Cruise Line, Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line and MSC Cruises. Which brands would be sailing is unclear at this time.
The fiscal year budget that would begin Oct. 1, 2020 and run through Sept. 30, 2021 won’t be voted on until September’s Port Authority meeting, but a first glance was discussed at the port meeting on Wednesday.
The proposed budget projects 50% sailing for the entirety of the fiscal year, but anticipates allowing more ships per line being added in each quarter.
No sailing, though, will occur until cruise lines get the OK from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. All cruise ships are currently under a no-sail order from the CDC that lasts into September, but could be extended.
It is possible some lines could sail before January, including MSC Cruises, which has previously stated an intention to begin sailing its MSC Seaside from Port Canaveral as early as November, but port officials aren’t counting on it, and thought budgeting with no sailing until January was a more realistic approach.
“We think that’s very very con
servative and the right thing to do in this environment,” said Port CEO Capt. John Murray. “We see what’s going on in Europe. We hope we’re over-conservative. We hope cruising starts before January.”
That includes the recent return to sailing of MSC Grandiosa in the Mediterranean, which was able to employ several layers of COVID-19 protections and turn around its first full sailing this past weekend.
Murray projects Port Canaveral will get up and running, but with the majority of passengers driving in and sailing on short itineraries at reduced ship capacities. While Grandiosa sailed at 70% capacity, Murray’s projections stuck with 50%, although if the CDC required less than 50%, Murray posited it wouldn’t be financially feasible for lines to sail at all due to fuel costs.
The meeting also discussed major cuts in staff and other cost reductions as part of the updated fiscal 2020 budget.
That includes another round of furloughs, retirement and layoffs so what had been a full-time staff of 268 before coronavirus now standing at 153.
“We were very very surgical in our approach,” Murray said. “It affected and impacted every department in one way shape or form at the port … we went deep on this one.”
With the shutdown of cruises in mid-March, the operating loss for 2020 stands at $12.3 million, according to port documents.
The staff reductions, contract reductions and shelving of projects until at least 2022 allowed the proposed operating budget to be reduced from the originally projected, pre-COVID fiscal 2020 level of $54.8 million to a fiscal 2021 proposal of $37.5 million, a 32% decrease.
For 2021, projected revenue is $56.9 million including a $34 million projection for cruise business from 1.6 million passengers on 432 multi-day sailings. That overall revenue projection is down from 2020’s revised $67.2 million, and that total was originally predicted before COVID-19 to be $115.7 million.