April 2020 | Forward
COMMENT
‘We will be back’ – Cruise Adviser’s love letter to the cruise industy We’re blessed to work in this industry – and we must celebrate it in order to rebuild it, writes Cruise Adviser co-publisher Anthony Pearce Since we launched in 2014, the pages of cruise adviser have been filled with superlatives: the biggest and best new ships, the longest seasons, the most exciting itineraries, the most innovative features. From shipyard visits to christenings and shakedowns, conferences, roadshows and our own events, we’ve watched and reported on the cruise industry as it has surpassed all expectations: a record-number of guests sailed, a record-number of ships were built, and a record-breaking amount of money was invested. By 2018, the number of Britons taking cruises had eclipsed two million, while, through the hard work of travel agents, TV shows such
as Cruising with Jane McDonald, and new and exciting products, the perception and conversations around cruise shifted. To invoke a football analogy, the cruise industry went from being noisy neighbours to title contenders. Even with the challenges presented by Brexit, the weakness of sterling, Trump in the White House and other geopolitical issues, cruise’s continued rise seemed assured. But over the past week, as one line after another suspended operations, and Clia, the industry body, advised the cancellations of cruises for 30 days, the unthinkable happened: cruise ships stopped sailing. It’s been more than four months
since covid-19 (Coronavirus) was detected in Wuhan, China, yet the devastation it has left in its wake has still taken us all by surprise. Very few people predicted that when Diamond Princess was quarantined off the port of Yokohama in early February, a global pandemic was beginning to take hold and would result in the Foreign Office taking measures unprecedented in peacetime, telling Britons not to travel, while the rest of the world would shut its borders. We’re in uncharted waters; none of us know what comes next or how the travel industry, as a whole, recovers from this. Sadly, cruise ships have become very visible representations of the pandemic,
Cruise Adviser’s first cruise, back in 2014 in the Norwegian fjords on a trip with Cruise & Martime Voyages – the image that graced the first ever Cruise Adviser cover
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