The past year has been both trying and triumphant for both Royal Caribbean (RCL) and Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL).
After being fully shut down, at least from U.S. ports for the first seven months of the year, both companies returned to serving American customers from Florida ports in July.
That marked the start of a very slow return full of setbacks caused by the ever-varying pandemic. Both Royal Caribbean and Carnival have slowly added more ships into service and added more ports including both companies sailing out of Galveston, Texas.
It has been slow, steady progress that was threatened by omicron which led to a small number of cancellations for both cruise lines as well as some canceled stops due to ports not wanting ships with active infections. Now, however, with omicron fading, boosters somewhat prevalent, and smoother seas seemingly ahead, Carnival has released its plan for the rest of the year.
Image source: Carnival.
Carnival Plans to Get All of Its Ships Sailing
Carnival sails out of 10 year-round cruise ports and expects to have all of those ports operational by March.
"With the opening of the Alaska season in May, Carnival will have returned its entire fleet to service, less than 10 months after resuming operations, completing an impressive and successful restart of its guest operations and setting the pace for the rest of the U.S. cruise industry," the company said in a press release.
Making that happen will involve moving around some of the company's fleet. That will impact some scheduled sailings with passengers being moved from the ship they booked on to a different one. The company has already begun telling passengers and travel agents about any changes.
The company has not made a statement on this, but generally, if a passenger is moved to a similar ship, nothing changes. If it's a nicer, newer, or larger ship then that's considered a positive while any passenger whose ship has been downgraded often receives an offer of onboard credit or a chance to rebook a sailing closer to their original plan.
“We appreciate everyone’s patience as we work through this process. We are excited to have every Carnival Cruise Line ship in the fleet sailing again by May and to be back in all 10 of our year-round U.S. homeports. We are also continuing to make plans for a return to guest operations in Australia upon completion of our Alaska season,” said Carnival President Christine Duffy.
Royal Caribbean Has Its Own Comeback Plans
Royal Caribbean, like its chief rival, has been slowly getting back to normal operations. The company had 50 of its 61 ships across five brands return to operation by the end of 2021, representing over 85% of its worldwide capacity. It also added Odyssey of the Seas to its fleet and will do the same with Wonder of the Seas in March.
"We expect 2022 will be a strong transitional year, as we bring the rest of our fleet back into operations and well-nigh historical occupancy levels," CEO Jason Liberty said in a press release.
He noted that omicron was an unexpected wrinkle that delayed some of its intended return to operations.
"Omicron created short-term operational challenges that have unfortunately weighed on close-in bookings," he said. "While the timing of Omicron was particularly unfortunate for the first half of 2022 bookings and will likely delay our return to profitability by a few months, we do not expect it to impact our overall recovery trajectory and the strong demand for cruising."
Royal Caribbean expects to bring its entire fleet back before the summer season of 2022 with "load factors approaching historical levels in the third quarter of 2022." The cruise line has been slowly increasing passenger totals since its return to operations making adjustments as health and safety protocols have required.
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