For passengers hoping to embark on the Disney Magic Eastbound Transatlantic cruise, happily ever after has hit rocky waters. As of mid-March, the fate of the 13-night journey from Miami to Barcelona is now in question as Disney Cruise Line announced that they were suspending all new departures from Saturday, 14th March, through April at the earliest. The fate of the transatlantic voyage with stops along the way in Lisbon, Cádiz, Gibraltar, and Cartagena now hangs in the balance as cruises face mass closures around the world. As a $150bn industry grinds to a halt due to the global pandemic, can cruise liners keep afloat?
Ships like the Disney Magic have made headlines over the past weeks as they face ongoing scrutiny over their role in Coronavirus outbreaks. It started with Carnival Cruise Line’s Diamond Princess, which found itself at the heart of a growing international crisis last month. On 1st February, an 80-year-old passenger tested positive for Covid-19 after disembarking the cruise liner in Hong Kong. The ship stalled in the Port of Yokohama in Japan, where its 3,711 passengers and crew were quickly quarantined as medical professionals assessed the spread of the virus amongst its quarters.
At the time of writing, about one out of every five people on Diamond Princess has tested positive for novel Coronavirus, joining the 21 passengers who later tested positive aboard a trip to Mexico on Carnival Cruise’s Grand Princess. Both ships have since been emptied, with passengers, crew, and captains entering extended quarantines in their home countries to prevent further transmission of the virus.
The question remains if these ships will return to sea in the near or distant future. While transatlantic cruises have existed since the RMS Britannia made its maiden voyage from Liverpool to Boston via Nova Scotia in 1840, the modern cruise line came of age shortly after the Baby Boom, when three Norwegian shipping companies came together to found the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line in 1968. It was a strange and turbulent time to invest in seafaring: The commercial jetliner was in its adolescent days, but its high speeds and short travel times spelled a near-certain end for boat-bound journeys that could take days to cross from Point A to Point B.
However, with promises of warm water, warm weather, and luxury unparalleled aboard their cruises, the Royal Caribbean planned to reinvent travel for the upper-class and by 1970, the company’s first ship was ready for dispatch. Known as MS Formosa Queen (née, chronologically, MS Song of Norway, MS Sundream, MS Dream Princess, MS Dream, MS Clipper Pearl, MS Clipper Pacific, MS Festival, and also MS Ocean Pearl), the liner could fit 724 passengers—a modest offering compared to the Titanic’s 2224 guests and crew members. Still, the Royal Caribbean cruises were well received and by 1987, the company had a fleet of four passenger vessels and a private port on the northern coast of Haiti.
While the Royal Caribbean ended last year with a net income of £1.65bn, the company’s stock has been free-falling over the past month. It joined Disney and Carnival in cancelling or suspending cruises for the coming weeks as providers scramble to assess the risk of the global pandemic. Norwegian Cruise Lines, the third-largest cruise provider in the world, took a different approach:
According to a report the Miami New Times last week, employees were allegedly offered one-liners to keep customers and potential customers at bay during a low-season for sales. “The only thing you need to worry about for your cruise is do you have enough sunscreen?,” one reads, while another takes a bolder stance: “The Coronavirus can only survive in cold temperatures, so the Caribbean is a fantastic choice for your next cruise.”
The relationship between international tourism and the global pandemic is one that continues to be highlighted in the media: As Spiegel reports, the ski resort in Ischgl, Austria, has been linked to the spread of Covid-19 across northern Europe, with Iceland declaring the winter sports town of just 1,600 permanent residents a danger zone on 5th March.
Both the physical and mental health of service workers remains collateral damage: Around 1,000 tourism professionals remain in Ischgl alongside around two dozen tourists due to the quarantine. Elsewhere, the New Yorker published diary entries of an anonymous crew member aboard a Princess Cruise earlier this week. By 5th March, team members had been working around the clock and panic-buying whatever they could from the crew bar, which had been reduced to rationing bottled water to two bottles per staff member each day.
"People are trading laundry detergent for shampoo, beers for dollars"
After docking in Oakland on 9th March to collect supplies and release local passengers and those deemed most vulnerable to health problems, the crew member noted the social environment on-board had devolved: “It’s starting to feel like a floating prison. I have some wine in my cabin that I have traded for some chips and chocolate this evening. People are trading laundry detergent for shampoo, beers for dollars.”
Like many in the service industry, crew members on cruises face financial precarity in the coming months: According to the New Yorker, the captain of the Grand Princess confirmed over the ship’s intercom that crew members would be paid for the duration of their quarantine period.
For those whose contracts still had months left, the prognosis was bleaker: “There is currently no decision to pay peoples’ contracts through their entire remaining contract periods, once they arrive home.”
The trickle-down effect of these policies will be felt around the world: One study in 2015 noted that while management positions were mostly filled by those of European or American nationality, “recruitment practices resulted in job status segmentation, where low-status job roles were recruited from less developed economies.”
The same study notes that low pay was a fixture of these support roles, and though the rates may be adequate compared to the standard wages of crew members’ respective home countries, most of the interview subjects noted that they were also supporting family members back home.
However, while the staff members scramble to deal with the loss of wages, there’s a chance that the industry can weather the storm as future departures remain in murky waters. Cruising remained the fastest-growing market within the travel industry during the 2000s recession, and a hefty percentage of revenue comes from onboard purchases.
While some may be deterred by the risk of Covid-19, others remain unconvinced: On Twitter and Facebook, micro-communities have sprouted up to speculate on whether or not their upcoming voyages will set sail as planned. As mainland Europe locks itself down to prevent the spread of Coronavirus, frequent cruises are still holding out hope for the Disney Magic—for them, happily ever after is just a few weeks away.
