The hardest hit sector in travel, the cruise industry, is getting back on its feet.
In the last week, plans were announced by four shipping lines to reintroduce cruises, starting on May 1.
Between them, reports New York-based Cruise Industry News (CIN), they will bring 40 506 berths back into service, operating mostly week-long cruises.
The cruise action for the moment is in Europe and leading the recovery is MSC Cruises which last Thursday announced they will be operating ten cruise ships in the eastern and western Mediterranean and in UK and Northern Europe. MSC alone will bring onto the market 32 178 berths on those ten liners, reports CIN.
MSC is bringing on two new cruise ships, the Virtuosa which will start operating short cruises out of the UK on June 12 and the Seashore which will operate in the western Med from August.
A year ago, some people imagined cruising was gone for good.
Leading cruise operator, Royal Caribbean Cruises, saw its share price drop over 80% from $133 (R1 904) at the beginning of last year to $23 (R329) in early April 2020.
Investors who believed in cruising’s comeback seized the opportunity and made a killing as the price recovered steadily to its close this weekend at $85 (R1 217).
A note on early cruising in SA: The father of the cruise industry in South Africa was an entrepreneur by the name of Max Wilson. Max re-purposed passenger liners into leisure cruise ships in the sixties. Passenger liners were being squeezed out by airlines, cruising was an answer for ship owners.
Ships like P&O’s Chusan and the Reina del Mar were eagerly sold by SA travel agents.
A relic of that era was this apologetic notice from P&O 50 years ago, in 1971. It marked the beginning of the slide of the Rand. This weekend the Rand is one tenth of its value then.
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