As Coronavirus Panic Reaches All-Time High, More Americans Plan Cruise Ship Vacations
Shane Trejo
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More Americans are planning on going on cruise vacations in 2021, hoping that the coronavirus pandemic will just be a forgotten memory by then, and they can once again go about their lives.
Analysts at UBS have reported that booking volume has “gone up 9 percent in the last 30 days versus the same time last year” for cruise ships in 2021. This is occurring in spite of the fact that the vast majority of cruise ships are quarantined during the panic.
“That includes people applying their future cruise credits from sailings that were cancelled this year, but still shows a surprising resilience in desire to book a cruise,” UBS equity analysts wrote in their March 31 release regarding cruise lines.
The report shows that most of the cruise goers hope to leave for Asia and Alaska. The individuals are signing up despite the fact that current cruise ships are still roaming at sea due to potential spread of the coronavirus.
Cruise ship attendees are now begging states to let them come onto their shores even though individuals arriving on shore could spread the coronavirus:
When Andrea Anderson and her husband boarded the MS Zaandam cruise ship in Buenos Aires, Argentina, more than three weeks ago, they didn’t know that their trip of a lifetime would disastrously coincide with a global pandemic that would leave them shut out and stranded at sea.
Unable to find a port willing to accept it, the ship has been stuck in a holding pattern for nearly two weeks as it desperately goes from country to country.
So far it has been rejected by Chile, Peru and Argentina, which all sealed their ports because of the coronavirus outbreak.
It is now charting a hope-filled course for the United States, namely Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
“I don’t know if they are going to accept us. I hope they do,” said Anderson, 63, a fiber artist from Maineville, Ohio. “We need to get off this ship.”
Anderson and more than 1,200 other passengers are pleading with Florida to let them in, but officials, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, say the state simply doesn’t have the resources to take on an extra burden amid a growing health crisis.
“We cannot afford to have people who are not even Floridians dumped into South Florida using up those valuable resources,” DeSantis said Monday on Fox News.
Four people have died on the ship, at least two of them from the coronavirus, while nine others have tested positive and 179 more have flu-like symptoms.
“People are getting sick, and they need proper medical attention in a hospital. They cannot be treated onboard,” Anderson said. “The people on this boat, we are all someone’s parent, grandparent, aunt and uncle. The governor should think, ‘What if my mother was on that boat?'”
While DeSantis has expressed staunch disapproval of the passengers’ disembarking, the final say lies in the hands of the Broward County Commission, which wasn’t able to come to a decision Tuesday. The commission is waiting for clear and proper protocols for disembarkation by the cruise line.
Commissioners still have a lot of conditions to consider, a spokesperson said.
The public hopes that the pandemic conditions are remedied in the near future, but if they are wrong, they will put themselves in serious danger with their cruise plans in 2021.
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