It’s not unfamiliar ground. The safe, closed environment and mobile nature of cruising has been a selling point since forever. It still is. We’ll remember this as a time when so much was up in the air. In the rearview mirror we’ll recall uncertainty. Simply going to the grocery store became an entirely different experience. Viewing organized sports? Probably not on the schedule any time soon. On a more positive note, we might also recollect this as a time when travel by ship began a new age.

Cruise lines will come back strong in a few years. Not this Summer, in a year or two. Nothing really new here, reasons cruising will be back sooner than later.

• Mobile Assets- Commonly tested during hurricane season, ships can be moved and travel plans continue. That won’t happen on your hurricane-destroyed all inclusive island vacation. You simply won’t travel.
• A Floating Hotel– Looking forward to cruising again, will the ports of call be ready for us? At this point, who cares? I don’t know about you, but a nice cruise to nowhere with a ship full of certified healthy people sounds pretty good right now.

Look for flipping the ship (moving one batch of passengers off while moving a new batch of passengers on the ship) to take longer. You want it to. Deep cleaning using methods not yet invented will add time. Your embarkation experience will take longer as well. It will no longer be a simple three question form to certify your seaworthiness. More questions will be asked and more documentable testing will be performed. Worth the investment of our time.

Whatever the world of travel turns out to be, whatever the new requirements bring to keep travelers safe, reforming the cruising experience will be faster and more efficient than accomplishing the same for entire countries.

Post-pandemic cruise travel will be the safe choice sooner than any other travel option.