Coronavirus: Will you be able to take a cruise soon?

Brian Sozzi
·Executive Editor
·3 min read

Sorry to my cruise-loving mom: It will be a little while longer before you could hop aboard a giant floating ship on a relaxing cruise to Alaska.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently extended its no sail order to September 30 from July 24 as the country grapples with another wave of rising COVID-19 infections and deaths. It’s unclear to numerous industry insiders if any form of cruising (say cruises at 50% of full capacity) will be allowed come September given the latest COVID-19 trends.

“So to predict when it will be appropriate, you have to look at COVID-19 and society at large. So when society is comfortable socially gathering, and in doing so, you’re not seeing surges and hospitalizations related to COVID-19, when you are at that point, you can begin to think about true social gathering. And then you can begin to think about a cruise,” Carnival Corp. (CCL) CEO Arnold Donald said at Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit Extra. “When is that going to happen in the U.S.? I wish I had that crystal ball. Could it happen soon? Sure.”

Donald isn’t sitting around waiting for the CDC to give the all clear. He continues to fight like hell to save Carnival and ensure it sees calmer waters.

The company has raised a total of $10 billion in liquidity through a mix of debt and equity. It has slashed $7 billion in annualized operating expenses through staff reductions and cut capacity by 9% via ship sales and the recycling of older vessels. Donald acknowledges Carnival will exit the pandemic smaller, but more operationally agile.

Passengers disembark from the Carnival Sunshine cruise ship Monday, March 16, 2020, in Charleston, S.C. Passengers said they had their temperature taken before getting on the cruise ship for the four-day cruise to the Bahamas but did not have their temperature taken getting off. According to passengers, cruise officials did ask them if they felt okay when leaving. (AP Photo/Mic Smith)

While cruising in the U.S. is shut down right now, Europe is showing signs of moving more aggressively to restart sailings. Carnival’s German-market focused Aida has received approval to set sail. Italy and Spain may be next to give the all clear sign.

“Three months ago, two and a half months ago, who would have thought Germany would be looking at opening borders and starting cruising? That wouldn't have been the case two months ago. But yet they are. Why? Because they're at a point right now where they have very low community spread. So they have mitigation of spread in Germany, lower incidences. They have plenty of hospital capacity, and so are not seeing massive surges in hospitalizations or anything. And they feel comfortable that there are protocols that they have in place in society in general that allow them to return to some sort of normal. And so we'll see how that plays out. It's just the beginning,” Donald explained.

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and co-anchor of The First Trade at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

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