Cruising is one of the fastest growing sectors of tourism worldwide. In 2018, over 28 million people took a cruise, a seven-percent increase from 2017. Over 14 million of those passengers were from North America, and 4.2 million of them went to Asia and China. The cruise tourism industry is a substantial part of the economy of coastal and island communities throughout southeast Asia.
Novel coronavirus, or COVID-19 as it’s now being called, has been wreaking havoc on all forms of tourism in that part of the world, understandably. Dozens of small east Asian airlines aren’t expected to survive the disease’s economic fallout, and now cruise lines are taking a massive hit as well: on February 24, 2020, the United States State Department began advising cruise ship tourists to avoid cruises that stop at any destination in Asia.
“This is a dynamic situation and U.S. citizens traveling by ship may be impacted by travel restrictions affecting their itineraries or ability to disembark, or may be subject to quarantine procedures implemented by the local authorities,” said a statement on the State Department’s website on February 24, 2020. The State Department also warned that repatriation flights will not generally be an option for tourists affected by local quarantines, an obvious reference to the struggles of the passengers aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
The Diamond Princess cruise ship was quarantined in Japan after more than 600 cases of novel coronavirus were diagnosed on board. This was the largest outbreak outside China, and two people died as a result. American citizens aboard the Princess cruise liner were brought back to the U.S. on impromptu charter flights, as were a number of American citizens from the vicinity of Wuhan, China, but the State Department wants it made clear that will not be an option for all.
The CDC, interestingly, is not backing up the State Department’s Asia-wide travel advisory. They confirm that so far, the cruising industry has been proactive in implementing its own screening procedures for novel coronavirus, sufficient to the task. Industry group the Cruising Lines International Association said the cruise industry’s screening procedures are “consistent with the advice to cruise passengers from the United States Government, issued on 20 February 2020.”
Photo: a 2010 image of the cruise ship Diamond Princess docked in the port of Nagasaki, Japan. Credit: PJ_Photography / Shutterstock.com