IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON THE CRUISE INDUSTRY

Luca Antonellini

Independent Consultant, Via Doberdo’ 19 Ravenna, Italy, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

ABSTRACT

The cruise industry is a market largely belonging to a few large groups that operate mainly through a variety of brands and which has seen significant growth dynamics in the last 20 years. Historically, most of the passengers came from the U.S. while the main geographic areas involved in cruises are the Caribbean / Bahamas / Bermuda. The impact of the pandemic caused by COVID-19 was very strong, bringing the market, in terms of the number of passengers carried and depending on the statistical sources used, back to the levels recorded in 1999. Some episodes of COVID contamination that occurred onboard cruise ships in February / March 2020 (with more than 3,900 passengers and crew involved and over 110 deaths), led to the total suspension of activities and also caused serious damage to the image of safety onboard. This research concerns the economic, financial and statistical results recorded in 2020 regarding the main cruise groups (Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, MSC Cruises). These results appear to be largely influenced by the pandemic. The research is carried out through the analysis of the annual reports, the deployment of the ships and the trend of stock market prices for listed groups. The strategies used by these groups to deal with the current crisis are also considered, along with the main changes that occurred in terms of market exit / new entries of companies. The conclusions concern the future implications in the cruise industry both in terms of the market and the timing of recovery, also in relation to the medical and therapeutic prerequisites required and adopted in the various countries concerning both the demand and supply of cruises.

Key Words: Cruise industry, COVID-19, Economic impact, Market impact

 

 

1. THE DEMAND SIDE

Dozens of papers on the cruise industry start with “Modern cruising, originating around 1970, is the fastest growing, most dynamic segment of the travel and tourism industry” or with similar sentences. The author suggests to also add "depending on the sources examined". The main statistical source used by researchers is that of the U.S. Cruise Line International Association (CLIA) but there are other sources from commercial publications that may present different results.

According to CLIA, global cruise demand reached 29.7 million passengers in 2019 (CLIA, 2020a). Compared to the 1,466 million overnight visitors to destinations (World Tourism Organization, 2020), the ratio of cruise passengers is a modest 2%. This figure rises to 10% if the ports of call are being considered as well (CLIA, 2020b).

In 2019 the North America region was the largest source market, counting for 52% of global cruise passengers. Europe counted for 26% of the global cruise market and the Rest of the World for the remaining 22%. In summary, a total of 25.5 million passengers were sourced from the top ten countries in 2019. This counts for 86% of global cruise passengers. The United States with 14.2 million passengers was the largest source country by far, counting for 48% of global cruise passengers. The last nine countries: Germany, UK, China, Australia, Canada, Italy, Brazil, Spain, and France generated about 38% of the global passengers (CLIA, 2020b, cit.).

As noted by CLIA, in 2019 51% of the cruisers were older than 50 years (14% more than 70 years) (CLIA, 2020c).

 

 

2. THE SUPPLY SIDE

The cruise industry is strongly polarized primarily in terms of passenger capacity. In fact, in 2019 the five most important companies held 85% of the market (62% in terms of number of ships) while the main two had a share of 64% (Antonellini, 2019). The most important operator is Carnival Corporation & plc (CCL) which owns nine brands; the second operator, Royal Caribbean Cruises, owns three brands to which is added the participation in TUIC (50% with the homonymous German tour operator). The third group, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH), has three brands while the fourth operator, MSC Cruises (MSC), is present with only one brand and has a different ownership structure than the others. The fifth group, Genting Hong Kong, also has three brands.

The process of mergers and acquisitions that started from the 80’s, along with the widening of the fleet through the building of new ships or the acquisition of ships already existing, have been the main strategies that the great groups pursued in order to increase their own dimension.

The oligopolistic market structure is rooted from two factors: the enormous fixed costs required in cruise line operation and the high entry barrier (Papatheodorou, 2006).

The most important organizational option for a company is the deployment, which is generally determined by the entire fleet and not the individual ship.The capacity deployed by the cruise industry, as measured by bed days, in 2019 reached 190.6 million. The Caribbean is the principal cruise destination with a share of the cruise industry’s global of 34% of all deployment days. Eleven Caribbean destinations had passenger arrivals in excess of one million passengers during the 2017-18 cruise year. Including the Mediterranean, Europe was the second destination with a share of 28.4%. Asia had a large growth over the 5-year period of 2014 to 2019 with an increase of 191 percent and a share for 2019 of 9.4%. The following position were for Australia/New Zealand (4.9%), Alaska (4.7%) and the Rest of the World (18.3%) (CLIA, 2020b, cit.).

Referring to Porter (1980), the three strategic options for a company are cost leadership, differentiation and the focus strategy. As noted by Gross & Luck (2012), CCL is widely accepted as a cost leader in the industry, and of thus employing an aggressive pricing strategy. In the current worldwide cruise market, premium and luxury ships attempt to establish an image or a brand, so that (potential) passengers perceive the cruise line to be unique in a certain sector, and are willing to pay a higher price. The niche strategy is most often applied by smaller providers in particular markets or for particular themes (e.g. food, wellness, photography, art, wine, dancing) and customer groups (e.g. seniors, families, nudists or the gay community). These include, for example, adventure cruises, expedition cruises, freighter cruises or round-the-world cruises.

The cruise orderbook for the period 2021-2027 is the following: 104 ships on order, 208,898 new berths expected for a total value of $61,3 billion (Cruise Industry News, 2021a). Larger ships command higher booking prices since they offer more amenities, but current trends indicate that the cruise industry has no ships larger than the Oasis class (belonging to RCL) in its order books. Optimal economies of scale may have been reached, which could leave additional opportunities for new entrants to exploit niche markets (Rodrigue & Notteboom, 2013; Chaos et al., 2020).

 

 

3. COVID-19 & CRUISES

It is important to note that global tourism has been exposed to a wide range of crises in the past. Between 2000 and 2015, major disruptive events include the September 11 terrorist attacks (2001), the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak (2003), the global economic crisis unfolding in 2008/2009, and the 2015 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak. None of them led to a longer-term decline in the global development of tourism, and some of them are not even notable, with only SARS (-0.4%) and the global economic crisis (-4.0%) leading to declines in international arrivals. This would suggest that tourism as a system has been resilient to external shocks (Gossling et al., 2020). In the same years the number of cruisers has kept growing also during the specific crisis for the cruise industry in January 2012 caused after the shipwreck of Costa Concordia.

In 2020, on cruise ships, Coronavirus had affected 3,908 people (passengers plus crew, only officially confirmed cases) of whom 111 passengers died (Blaskey et al., 2020). The first epidemic outbreak occurred on Diamond Princess (February) resulting in a 15-day ship quarantine in Port Yokohama (Japan) and 712 infected (including 14 deaths). The second outbreak was on Grand Princess (February-March), two consecutive voyages back to back (132 total infected 7 deaths). The third/largest outbreak was on Ruby Princess with 852 cases (passengers plus crew, included with 28 deaths) but those were confirmed after a debarkation in Sidney NSW and also the ship was quarantined in Australia (Cruismapper, 2021). As of October 2020, over 87 cruise ships had confirmed cases of coronavirus on board (Blaskey et al., 2020, cit.).

The Diamond Princess outbreak was the event that pushed cruise tourism into the crisis (Radic et al., 2020). Many authors described the event from different points of view (Zhang et al., 2020; Mizumoto & Chowell, 2020; Sahu & Naqvi, 2020; Rocklöv et al. 2020; inter alia).

Moriarty (2020) reported that “cruise ships are often settings for outbreaks of infectious diseas because of their closed environment, contact between travelers from many countries, and crew transfers between ships”.

Ito et al. (2020) indicated the risk of infection on board a ship increases proportionately as the number of passengers increase. In addition the cruise ships infected with COVID-19 were sailing mostly from the same home-port to the same port of call in a week’s time.

CLIA announced the first changes to its public health policy at the end of January, within 24 hours of the World Health Organization’s initial declaration of a public health emergency. By mid-March, CLIA members voluntarily suspended cruise passenger sailings worldwide, making the cruise industry one of the first industries to temporarily pause commercial (CLIA, 2020a, cit.).

On March, 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a “No Sail Order” for cruise ships due to the risk cruise ship travel introducing, transmitting or spreading COVID-19. This Order was confirmed in the following months and expired on October 31, 2020 (CDC, 2020a).

In July 2020, RCL and NCLH announced a collaboration to form a group of experts called the “Healthy Sail Panel” to guide the industry in the development of new and enhanced cruise health and safety standards. The panel consists of globally recognized experts from various disciplines, including public health, infectious disease, biosecurity, hospitality and maritime operations. On September 21, 2020, the expert panel published a report, which included 74 detailed best practices across five key areas of focus to protect the public health and safety of guests, crew and the communities where their cruise ships visit.

On October 30, 2020, the CDC issued a “Conditional Order” that introduced a phased approach for the resumption of passenger cruises. These phases include: a) the establishment of laboratory testing of crew onboard cruise ships in U.S. waters; b) simulated voyages designed to test a cruise ship operator’s ability to mitigate COVID-19 on cruise ships; c) a certification process; and d) a return to passenger voyages in a manner that mitigates the risk of COVID-19 introduction, transmission or spread among passenger and crew onboard ships and ashore to communities. The Conditional Order replaced the CDC’s No Sail Order and will remain in effect until the earlier of a) the expiration of the Secretary of Health and Human Services’ declaration that COVID-19 constitutes a public health emergency, b) the CDC Director’s rescission or modification of the Conditional Order based on specific public health or other considerations, or c) November 1, 2021 (CDC, 2020b). On April 2, 2021, CDC released a new phase of the Framework for Conditional Sailing Order (contested by the companies) for cruise ships operating or seeking to operate in U.S. waters.

Following the global pause in cruise operations in mid-March, cruises resumed sailing in parts of Europe, Asia and the South Pacific beginning in July 2020. From early July through mid-December 2020, there were more than 200 sailings (CLIA, 2020a, cit.).

There is much evidence that the impact of COVID-19 has caused a collapse. Cruise Market Watch (2021) estimated that the number of passengers has fallen to 7.1 million (level recorded in 1999). In the Caribbean the cruise traffic has lost 70% regarding 2019 (Caribbean Tourism Organization, 2021).

 

ECONOMIC IMPACT

The three leading cruise companies have their shares listed and traded on international stock exchanges (New York, London); thus, useful empirical reflections can be gained by their stock market behavior, performance, and market value.

The revenues for 2019 of CCL, RCL, NCLH and MSC have been of 41,8 billion dollars, 83% of the total of the cruise industry (Cruise Market Watch, 2019). In 2019 the four groups transported 24,87 million passengers with MSC that exceeded NCLH of approximately 55k passengers.

In the period from 2008 to 2019 the average annual growth of revenues in nominal terms was 4.8%. In the same period the revenues from the sales of the tickets were diminished average of 6% (9% for CCL) in favour of the revenues from onboard activities (in 2019 pairs to 31% of the revenues). This has allowed a higher degree of freedom in companies' sales strategies through more aggressive pricing policies.

According to Vogel (2017), to cope with the various crisis, the cruise lines preferred lowering ticket prices, even drastically, in order to secure full occupancy, to the alternative of keeping ticket prices constant and risking lower occupancy. This policy makes economic sense when demand is price-elastic.

The effects of COVID-19 on the cruise industry in 2020 have been very important causing a loss of 76% of the revenues and the operating income passed from $7,1 bln. to -$17,9 bln. (Table 1).

Table 1 Consolidated statement of income of the main four cruise groups (million $)

	2020	2019
Revenues
Passenger ticket	6,669	29,119
Onboard and other	3,260	12,674
	9,929	41,794
Operating costs and expenses
Commissions, transportation and other	-2,031	-6,085
Onboard and other	-939	-3,445
Payroll and related	-3,313	-4,721
Fuel	-1,676	-2,937
Food	-695	-2,052
Ship and other impairments	-1,967	-26
Otheroperating	-3,146	-5,548
	-13,767	-24,816
Marketing, selling and administrative	-4,120	-5,444
Depreciation and amortization	-4,680	-4,398
Impairment loss	-5,270	0
	-27,837	-34,658
Operating income	-17,908	7,135

Passenger ticket revenues primarily consist of revenues for accommodation, meals, certain types of onboard entertainment, and include revenues for service charges, air and land transportation to and from the ship that guests choose to purchase from the companies. Onboard revenues primarily consist of revenues from beverage sales, retail sales, shore excursions, gaming, speciality dining, certain spa services and photo services. Some services may be managed through contracts with third-party concessionaires. As noted by Clancy (2017) “once aboard passengers are captive consumers”.

During 2020 cruise companies have experienced detrimental financial implications, in terms of revenue and profits and at the same time of upward additional costs (for instance, costs associated with substantial refunds for cancellations, costs associated with docking ships at ports where ships were quarantined, costs of maintenance even when not sailing for utilizing cruise ship engines to provide power to maintain onboard services, etc.) (Syriopolous et al., 2020).

The detrimental COVID-19 financial implications for cruise revenue, profits and the gloomy business prospects are underlined indeed by the highly volatile and dramatic collapse of share prices for the largest listed cruise groups. Indicatively, CCL, RCL and NCLH share prices declined sharply at $9.30, $22.33, and $7.77, respectively, as the virus burst (March 18, 2020), recording losses by 80-90% from the beginning of the year (share prices at $49.89, $133.49, and $57.60, respectively, on January 3). Cruise share prices, nevertheless, rebounded later, returning up at $27.21, $84.90, and $30.31, respectively (April 29, 2021), partly mitigating the earlier heavy losses (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Stock market daily trends of the three main cruise groups ($)

 

According to a KPMG report (Giese, 2020), a set of direct responsive actions was under play by the cruise industry to keep future business intact, including bonus credit offers (110–125% of booking amount) instead of cash refunds, as an option to cruise passengers whose trips have been cancelled due to the pandemic, providing flexibility for future bookings.

As noted by Nhamo et al. (2020), major cruise ship companies were not included in many economic stimuli, and bailout packages rolled out by countries to support their productive sectors. This was as a result of the cruise ships companies avoiding paying taxes in the past, registering in tax haven countries such as Panama, Bermuda, Malta, the Bahamas and the Marshall Islands (Frittelli, 2020). In that way cruise ship companies employed more workers from the developing countries, overworked them and pay them less. According to annual report filings, the major cruise lines pay an average tax rate of 0.8% — for below the 21% US corporate tax rate (Crockett, 2020).

Based on 2020 figures, all three major cruise companies have seen their long-term debt exposure increased a lot against 2019, by 129% at $22.13 bln. for CCL, by 113% at $17.96 bln. for RCL, and by 93% at $11.68 bln. for NCLH.

In addition to the bad publicity the cruise ship companies got during tours in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the industry has had to contend with potentially costly lawsuits and criminal investigations from all over the world (Nhamo et al., 2020, cit.).

 

 

4. STRATEGIES

To face the crisis, in 2020 CCL accelerated the exit of 19 vessels, negotiated the delay of 16 ships on order, executing a rationalization of the fleet reducing capacity by 13 percent (Carnival, 2021).

In March 2021, RCL sold the Azamara brand, including its three-ship fleet, to private equity firm Sycamore Partners for $201 million.

By October 2020, at least three cruise lines: Birka Cruises, Cruise & Maritime Voyages and Pullmantur Cruises had gone out of business because of the pandemic (The Maritime Executive, 2020). Pullmantur Holdings (51% Cruises Investments Holding and 49% RCL) filed for reorganization under the terms of the Spanish insolvency laws due to the negative impact of COVID-19.

However, a number of new cruise lines announced their intentions to enter the cruise market in 2020, launching sales and marketing efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. In some cases, the startups were carefully planned prior to the pandemic, while in some, cheap ships or other circumstances gave birth to a number of new cruise lines. Among them, the Greek Seajets, the English Tradewing Voyages, the Cypriot Swan Hellenic, the Indiana Cordelia Cruises, the Turkish Selectum Blu Cruises and the Chinese Foresee Cruises (Cruise Industry News, 2021).

The cruise traffic for 2021, estimated assuming post COVID-19 sailings begin March 1, 2021 at 50% capacity and reach 90% capacity by end of year, is around 13.9 million passengers (about the values of 2006/2007) (Cruise Market Watch, 2021, cit.). On the other hand, according to the forecasts of Maritime Strategies International, the cruisers for 2021 will be 11.9 million (Hellenic Shipping News, 2021).

From the point of view of itineraries, it is possible that some of them will change depending on the evolution of the pandemic and the maritime regulations of each country. Kalosh (2020) suggested offering short itineraries –such as three to seven days– with a limited number of ports of call. This solution is specifically indicated for cruise companies that own specific islands (as it happens in the Caribbean) and will be able to control easily shoreside experience. Focusing on national travellers has been a partial solution for other types of lodgements, and it could be the solution for the cruise industry (Sharples & Sit, 2020). If this happens, Espinet et al. (2021) predicted that in the coming years the target of cruise ships will change and will be addressed to domestic passengers. Maybe, another solution could be to stay more ‘at sea’.

Some countries may benefit from COVID-19 policies. Others, however, may be excluded. For example, in 2021 the port of Haifa (Israel) was chosen as an home-port by RCL for cruises where both crew and guests above sixteen years old will be vaccinated. On the opposite side Alaska risks for the second year to remain without cruises because of the norms of the U.S. and Canada (Rowan Kelleher, 2021).

 

 

5. CONCLUSIONS

The cruise industry has been heavily targeted by COVID-19 pandemic. It has caused the arrest of ships, the collapse of the number of cruisers with heavy financial losses for the companies. The outbreak of COVID‐19 onboard several cruise ships, as well as the sudden termination of hundreds of voyages, significantly affected the perception and promotion of cruising as a ‘safe’ holiday (Holland et al., 2020; Pan et al. 2020).The cruise industry has also been affected by a narrative in the wider media of cruise ships as ‘petri‐dishes’ (Awoniyi, 2020) and this lasting negative image may be difficult to overcome.

According to Skift Research (2020) “There is no question that the industry will come out of this crisis looking very different from when it went in”.

Although the time lapse for recovery is unknown and it will depend on the measures implemented, such as travel restrictions and the closure of borders, some sources estimated that it will take between 2 years and 4 years (Mayling, 2021; Reuters, 2021; Espinet et al., 2021, cit.) to obtain the same results than before the pandemic. Other sources believed it will take more years (Christoforous, 2020; Holland, 2021).

For the resumption of the cruise industry, it will be fundamental to see the course of the pandemic in the Caribbean and in the U.S. The Caribbean has currently a lower number of cases of COVID-19 and deaths per million inhabitants than North American or the EU (with some exceptions such as Puerto Rico and the French Guiana). However, today, there are few countries with high vaccination rates. It should also be noted that in the Caribbean the number of beds in intensive care in hospitals is limited with the risk of saturation even with a low number of admissions.

The average age of the cruisers, moreover, will have to be considered and could become lower.

According to NCLH and MSC (2021) the cruise industry expect a gradual phased relaunch of the ships after the voyage suspension period, with the ships initially operating at reduced occupancy levels. The timing for returning to service and the percentage of the global fleet in service will depend on a number of factors including, but not limited to, the duration and extent of the COVID-19 pandemic, including further resurgences and new variants of COVID-19, the availability, distribution and efficacy of vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19, the ability to comply with the Conditional Order for U.S. cruises, port availability, travel restrictions, bans and advisories and ability to re-staff ships and implement new enhanced health and safety protocols.

 

 

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