Speaking during a 2020 Q1 earnings call on Wednesday (20 May) Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd’s chair and chief executive said the group’s mission upon returning to service was to “raise our standards to entirely new levels” to meet consumer expectations.
RCCL announced yesterday it was “expecting” to sail again from 1 August.
Fain said since its initial suspension of operations in March “the pace of new information and understanding [of the virus] has been astounding”.
“Things that we were told were right one week became unthinkable merely a week later. The flow of information has been so fast; it’s been hard to assimilate.
“Fortunately, our level of understanding and that of governments around the world is beginning to stabilise or at least seems to be. We’re all beginning to understand the do’s and dont’s and the tight structures are beginning to loosen.”
RCCL’s Healthy Return to Service programme will have four main focuses; upgraded screening prior to boarding, enhanced processes and procedures onboard, a special focus on health in destinations and procedures for dealing with any reports of exceptions.
The company has assembled a “blue ribbon team” of experts to advise it on procedures, Fain said.
The guise of RCCL’s resumption of sailing, he predicted, would be “highly dependent on many different factors”, including the availability of testing, contact tracing and the development of a Covid vaccine.
“While it’s very difficult to have any certainty around the timing or shape of recovery, we do intend to make sure that we are prepared for it and for the changes it will entail,” he explained.
Assessing the consumer appetite for travel post-Covid and how the industry would need to meet demands, Fain compared the current situation to that post-9/11.
He recalled travel demand returning but with security procedures permanently changed.
“In fact, travel became very different from pre-9/11. What happened was that we adjusted. And all travel that took place in the post-9/11 world was really quite different from travel previously.
“It’s hard to remember that that dynamic took place. Travel didn’t simply revert to what it had been, rather travel adjusted to the new normal, and it grew on that basis.
“I believe personally that the same thing is going to happen in a post-Covid-19 world. Travel and tourism will grow, but not by reverting to what it was, but by adjusting to a world where all activities, everything we do in the world will have changed.”
