Friday May 14th 2021
Second attempt with short trips
Cruise season starts in Germany
First the cruise industry experiences a boom that has lasted for years, then comes the corona shock. Now she is trying a “restart 2.0” – falling infection numbers make it possible. It starts on the weekend of Pentecost. The offer is still quite manageable, but that should change soon.
Cruise fans can pack their bags: On the weekend of Pentecost, the crisis-ridden cruise industry in Kiel starts the season in Germany. After the first corona shock and the summer restart in 2020 as well as the renewed lockdown in autumn, this is the second attempt with which the shipping companies want to build on the abruptly interrupted long-term cruise boom.
The beginning is the “Aidasol” of the Carnival subsidiary Aida Cruises; the ship will set off from the Schleswig-Holstein capital on short tours in the Baltic Sea. One day later, TUI Cruises follows with “Mein Schiff 1”, also with “Blauen Reisen”, in which holidaymakers initially stay on the Baltic Sea for the whole time without going ashore. The TUI subsidiary Hapag-Lloyd Cruises will also start the German season a little later from Kiel with the smaller new building “Hanseatic inspiration”.
SH has the lowest corona values in Germany
The cruise industry owes the “New Start 2.0” in Kiel to the falling numbers of new corona infections in Schleswig-Holstein. The country between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea has had by far the lowest values in Germany for a long time. For this reason, Prime Minister Daniel Günther opened tourism, which is so important for the state, on May 17th – travelers are allowed to enter the country under strict guidelines. Four weeks later, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania also wants to follow suit. Aida Cruises is therefore planning to offer tours from Rostock-Warnemünde again on July 1st.
At the other seaports in Hamburg and Bremerhaven that are relevant for cruises, it is not that far yet. “We assume that cruises will be made possible again at the latest when the ban on accommodation is lifted,” says the German managing director of the international industry association CLIA, Helge Grammerstorf. “We know the rules, but we don’t yet know when the game will kick off.”
If they come, things can happen quickly. According to the CLIA, most cruise ships are in an operational state in ports or in roadsteads – with nautical-technical and service personnel on board. “We are determined to get the ships back to the start quickly,” said Aida spokesman Hansjörg Kunze. And TUI Cruises spokeswoman Godja Sönnichsen also says: “We are assuming that we will be back at the start with the ships of the Mein Schiff fleet in the course of the summer.”
Manageable range, great confidence
Even outside of Germany, the offer is still manageable: German providers have so far only been on the move around the Canary Islands, after the announced opening of Greece to tourism, cruises will soon follow there. For the cruise industry, battered by lockdowns, entry bans and travel warnings for practically all important destinations, the start of Pentecost is initially only a glimmer of hope. However, there is great confidence that the fan base will come back on board very quickly as soon as broad-based travel is possible again.
“For 2021 we have great uncertainties about the forecast,” says Grammerstorf. “For 2022 – assuming we get into a normal state – the demand is remarkably high.” The German Travel Association (DRV) sees it similarly. “I don’t think the boom cruise is over,” says DRV spokeswoman Kerstin Heinen. “We see that the cruise is booked well – but we don’t see whether these are rebookings or actually new bookings.”
TUI wants to expand further after the crisis
The TUI Group wants to further expand its cruise business after the crisis. The British line Marella Cruises is to be brought into a joint venture, as has already been done at Hapag-Lloyd. TUI Cruises is a joint venture between the world’s largest travel operator and the cruise group Royal Caribbean. With such joint ventures, TUI is pursuing the goal of further developing the pre-Corona booming market without placing too much additional burden on its own balance sheet. “This is the only way to manage to grow fast enough,” says CEO Fritz Joussen. “At Marella in particular, we will see new ships in the next few years.”
With 2.6 million passengers and around 6.6 billion euros in sales (2019), according to CLIA, 48,000 jobs in this country are directly linked to it – from suppliers to shipyards, but indirectly much more. Numbers for the Corona year 2020 are not available. Globally in the industry, the losses are estimated at a double-digit billion amount. According to estimates by the Association for Shipbuilding and Marine Technology (VSM), around 20 billion dollars were burned at the three largest shipping companies alone. “Significant new orders before 2024 are not to be expected,” says the VSM. For shipbuilders like the Meyer shipyard in Papenburg, Lower Saxony, which specializes in cruise giants, this is a threatening situation.
Strict corona rules on board
Crusaders themselves as well as the crews still have to adapt to strict hygiene and safety rules. These rules, which have been in place throughout the industry since summer 2020, are intended to prevent a debacle such as the mass outbreak on the cruise ship “Diamond Princess”, which was quarantined off Japan for weeks at the beginning of 2020.
Corona tests are compulsory, distance rules and a mask requirement apply on board. Instead of standing at the buffet, the guests are served their food at the table. Only around half of the capacity of the ships is used. There are separate protocols for cases of infection, which are intended to ensure that passengers can be isolated as quickly as possible and that all contacts can be traced. “We have proven that cruises are safely possible. We have shown that it works,” said TUI Cruises spokeswoman Sönnichsen.
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