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REPATRIATION

Cruise guests still at sea as Ashford asks countries for “grace and compassion”

Holland America Line president delivers heartfelt appeal as ports refuse access

Holland America Line president Orlando Ashford has accused countries of turning their backs on thousands of people “left fl oating at sea” after cruise ships were denied access to ports. In a video message, he called for “compassion and grace” after four people died and eight people tested positive for Covid-19 on the Zaandam. As March 30, 76 guests and 117 crew on board have infl uenza-like illness, while a number of healthy patients had been transferred to Rotterdam. There are believed to be a number of British guests on board both ships. Zaandam and Rotterdam have been granted access to pass through the Panama Canal, but Ashford added: “We need confi rmation from a port that is willing to extend the same compassion and grace that Panama did, and allow us to come in so our guests can go straight to the airport for fl ights home.

“We have seen a notable and steady decline in cases of the last 48 hours, which shows the immediate actions we took have helped contain spread. However, there are also 1,167 healthy guests and 1,130 healthy crew across these two ships,” he added.

Both ships are travelling towards Florida, but the state’s governor, the Republican Ron DeSantis, said on Monday that guests cannot be “dumped” in his state, dismissing those on board as mostly “foreigners”. Coral Princess is also heading to Florida after being refused disembarkation in Brazil; Princess Cruises confi rmed to cruise adviser that there are 374 British guests on board. In a statement, Princess said: “Despite continued e orts from consulates, Anvisa [the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency] has denied the disembarkation of Coral Princess guests, including those with confi rmed outbound fl ights.” It added: “There remains no known risk of Covid-19 onboard.”

Meanwhile, Cruise & Maritime Voyages performed a remarkable mid-ocean transfer between two of its ships, Columbus and Vasco da Gama, after it was denied access into Thailand. Columbus is now undertaking a 7,842 nautical mile voyage directly back to the UK with 907 guests, including 602 British nationals, and 619 crew members on board. The voyage includes a technical call in Colombo, Sri Lanka then travels via the Suez Canal with a fi nal technical call, before arriving back in Tilbury on April 13.

Cuba o ered a haven to the Braemar, the Fred Olsen ship, after several other Caribbean countries declined to let it dock. Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, said it wanted to “reinforce healthcare, solidarity and international cooperation”. The communist country, which has recently sent doctors to Italy to help fi ght the spread of Covid-19, has been accused by some of running a PR exercise, but guests, who have since been fl own back to the UK, have expressed their gratitude.

Guests ‘fl oating at sea’

Continued from p5

“Thanks once more to the people of Cuba for their generosity and humanity,” wrote one guest, Steve Dale, on Twitter. “Hoping to come back here one day when we’ve all forgotten about #Covid19.”

“The worst thing has been being in limbo, not knowing what is going to happen next. We have been sailing around in circles for the last week, really,” another guest Clive Whittington told Reuters before disembarkation. “Whether the Cubans took us in to get brownie points or not, we are very grateful.” According to the trade organisation Clia, around fi ve per cent of cruise ships around the world still have passengers on board. Andy Harmer, director of Clia UK & Ireland, said: “A handful of ships are in process of concluding their voyages. Our cruise line members are singularly focused on the health and safety of those on board, including bringing the ships safely back to port as soon as they can to ensure the safe and smooth return of passengers to their homes.

“Flight restrictions and port closures have created some logistical challenges. However, the industry and individual member lines are addressing these issues as quickly as they can.”

This week, the government announced a £75m airlift operation to rescue hundreds of thousands of British nationals stranded abroad because of the pandemic. The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, announced the government had reached an agreement with British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, easyJet, Jet2 and Titan to help repatriate Britons from places where commercial airlines were no longer fl ying.

However, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said: “We were promised a new strategy on repatriations today, but for the hundreds of thousands of Brits stranded abroad and their families back home – it was just more of the same.”

Abta criticises lack of government action on travel regulation

Abta has warned that customers with cancelled holidays will face lengthy delays in getting their money back if travel fi rms are forced into bankruptcy. The association has urged the government act now, with governments in France, Belgium, Denmark and Italy having all introduced changes to EU rules. Abta has written to the prime minister as well as other ministers urging immediate action to avoid damage to the UK travel industry. Mark Tanzer, Abta chief executive, said: “The global pandemic has put enormous financial strain on tour operators and travel agents, with businesses seeing a collapse in sales while facing immediate repatriation costs and refund demands for cancelled holidays on a scale that is unmanageable in the short term.

“These businesses are themselves waiting for refunds from hotels and airlines and without this money, they simply do not have the cash to provide refunds to customers within 14 days.

“Existing regulations are entirely unsuited to deal with this situation. We want to avoid the scenario of normally successful travel businesses employing tens of thousands

of people facing bankruptcy, resulting in holidaymakers having to wait many months for refunds through Government fi nancial protection schemes.

“We are proposing some simple, temporary changes to regulations to buy more time for companies to keep trading, while ensuring customer rights are protected. Many European countries, including France, Belgium, Denmark and Italy, have already announced similar regulatory changes to preserve their travel industries and protect customers.” In a statement from Abta, the company proposed the following temporary amendments to the Package Travel Regulations: • That the 14-day window for refund payments should be extended to a four-month period • That government should confi rm the ongoing protection of refund credits. • That where suppliers (eg hotels or airlines) cannot or will not refund tour operators, there should be an emergency government consumer hardship fund to help fulfi l refund payments

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Agencies start furloughing STAFF

A number of travel agencies, including Hays Travel, are taking advantage of the government’s recently announced Job Retention Scheme

The travel agency, which is the UK’s largest, has furloughed the majority of its workforce following.

The company took on 2,300 former Thomas Cook sta after taking over the leases to all 553 of its shops following the travel giant’s collapse last September.

It also recruited 200 additional sta for its head o ce in Sunderland. Of its 5,700 sta , 2,500 work in retail across 650 branches in the UK.

The company said it had taken “all measures available to protect our industry and jobs”.

Tui UK is to furlough 11,000 sta in the UK, including almost 4,500 retail agents. Managing director Tui UK and Ireland Andrew Flintham said: “It is imperative that we make these di cult cost decisions and also look after our colleagues during such unprecedented uncertainty. We are a fantastic business and we look forward to taking people on holiday again soon.”

Kuoni parent company Der Touristik UK will retain its sta during the coronavirus pandemic, including the 70 workers it made redundant on March 20. Derek Jones, chief executive, said: “All valued sta who left the business last week would immediately be brought back into the

business and then furloughed. “The chancellor’s lifeline on Friday has meant we can now protect as many of our team as possible,” he said. “There has not been much to cheer about recently but we can at least be happy that these sta have a little less to worry about for the next few months.”

Premier Travel has furloughed the majority of its shop staff with a core team now working from home. The agency, which has 25 high-street branches across East Anglia, has furloughed 67 of its 100 agency staff.

MEDIA

Travel industry unites with #OneTravelIndustry

The travel trade media in the UK & Ireland is uniting behind the #onetravelindustry movement, to bring competing media businesses together with one common goal during the coronavirus crisis. Titles including ABTA Magazine, CRUISE ADVISER, Cruise Trade News, Selling Travel, Travel Bulletin, TravelMole and TTG are working together to stand behind the industry, at a time when the sector faces its biggest ever threat.

All the brands will be using #onetravelindustry to showcase best practice, tips and experiences from across the travel industry to share how companies large and small are dealing with the impact of the coronavirus.

The group will also share each others’ content under the hashtag, to ensure the widest exposure possible for the learnings and advice to come out of the crisis – demonstrating ‘one travel media’, uniting behind one travel industry.

Each business has been informing their readerships of the unfolding crisis and supporting the industry since it began and will continue to do so, separate to the campaign.

The travel media signatories, each committing to promote best practice in travel for #onetravelindustry, are:

Steve Hartridge, editorial director, BMI Publishing

Chris Pitchford, CEO, Real Response Media Jeanette Ratcli e, publisher, Travel Bulletin

Graham McKenzie, managing director, TravelMole

Daniel Pearce, CEO, TTG Media

Sam Ballard and Anthony Pearce, directors, Waterfront Publishing

Cruise ships o ered as fl oating hospitals AID

Carnival Corporation are among the cruise operators to o er their ships to governments for use during the Coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement, Carnival said that its cruise line brands, including Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises and P&O Cruises Australia, will be made available to “communities for use as temporary hospitals to help address the escalating impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on healthcare systems around the world”. On Twitter, Tony Roberts, vice president UK & Europe, Princess Cruises, wrote: “With the continued spread of Covid-19 expected to exert added pressure on healthcare facilities, Princess Cruises (and other Carnival brands) are calling on governments and health authorities to consider using cruise ships as temporary healthcare facilities.”

A spokesperson for Saga Cruises said: “Our cruise ships are currently in Tilbury Docks as we have temporarily suspended cruise operations. In

these unprecedented times it is important that we all pull together and provide any support that we can – as individuals and as companies.

“We would be very happy to have a conversation with the government about the use of our ships if it would help expand the capabilities of our amazing NHS. There are, however, no current plans to use our ships in this way.” Mike Hall, Cruise & Maritime Voyages marketing director, said: “CMV is always prepared to o er assistance based on humanitarian needs. Currently, CMV ships Magellan and Astoria are moored in Tilbury. Magellan has 726 cabins and Astoria 277 cabins.”

Labour councillor Steve Liddiard, who represents the Tilbury St Chads ward, told the BBC: “I understand this has been happening in a number of countries and if things get that serious – and we hope it won’t – then it sounds like a wonderful opportunity.

“Specifi c facilities would be needed such as piped in oxygen and I don’t know how practical that is on a cruise ship. Hopefully the costs of providing the ships could be met by the NHS, but let’s hope that it doesn’t get to that.” In Italy, MSC Cruises has o ered its ships as fl oating hospitals. Grandi Navi Veloci (GNV), which is part of MSC Group, has converted its ferry Splendid into a fl oating hospital to assist patients with Covid-19 and those convalescing in Italy’s hard-hit Liguria region.

GNV started working on the project together with classifi cation society RINA in early March, in coordination with Italy’s Liguria Health System and Civil Protection. The vessel can be quickly adapted to meet future needs of the region as the Covid-19 emergency evolves. Stationed at Ponte Colombo in Genoa’s Ferry Terminal, Splendid currently o ers 25 beds in single cabins, although it is possible to equip additional cabins up to a total of 400 beds. The fl oating hospital also features a heliport and dedicated areas for healthcare personnel and crew.