Several cruise operators, such as the Costa Cruise and the Royal Caribbean Cruise coddle to Indians travelling abroad. These cruises had implemented comprehensive security checks for ensuring the safety and welfare of the crew and travellers. This step was taken as a preventative measure, after two of the luxury cruise travellers afloat with Indian passengers were quarantined due to the outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus.
The Royal Caribbean had started implementing several conventional measures to safeguard the crew and the passengers on board. These measures included denying any passenger to board the cruise, who had travelled or had come in contact with anyone who had travelled to or from Hong Kong, Macau and Mainland China in the recent 15 days.
This measure had been adopted after consultation with the WHO, US CDC, and other public healthcare sectors. The protocol included quarantining of unwell individuals, providing professional medical treatments followed by thorough sanitization procedures such as ship cleaning and air purification. They had been modifying their safety protocol and taking the required precautions.
Nishith Saxena, founder, and director of industry association cruise professional in India said that there could be a negative consequences on bookings to the far east, “Since most Far-East and South-East Asian countries are adopting stringent measures to monitor any further spread of Coronavirus at all points of entry – which include ports, airports or border roads, in all likelihood the outbreak would be contained within the next few weeks,” he said.
“Still, keeping in mind the traveller’s health concern and the reduced air-connectivity within various countries in the affected regions, we expect a negative impact on the bookings at least for the next 2-3 weeks,” he added.
The Princess Diamond Cruise ship, which had been quarantined off the coast of Japan, had encountered a total of 63 infected cases. Along with another cruise ship known as The World Dream had been quarantined when 8 of their former passengers had contracted the virus.
It also had been noted that the Travel Portals such as Cleartrip had witnessed a 40% drop in bookings made to some countries to South East Asia and China after the sudden outbreak of the virus.
