Richard D. Fain, chairman and CEO of the Royal Caribbean Group, has released another video, providing his view on the pandemic and when cruising will resume operations.
Throughout the pandemic, Fain has released videos, which often offered reassuring messages for travel advisors, as well as cruise loyalists.
In his latest Feb. 2 video, he is optimistic about the downward track of the spread of COVID-19.
“The sharp decline in cases is clearly underway,” he said. “The number of cases is still high, but it’s heading downward at a rapid pace. The data show a peak on January 12 of almost 250,000 cases, and it’s already dropped below 150,000 and is heading south quickly. Most of the expert predictions show this rapid decline continuing nicely over the next several months, and that’s exactly what we need we need.”
Of course, he said the most common question he’s asked is when will cruising return.
“I know you all want to know the answer as well as I do,” Fain said. “My answer is consistently ‘I don’t know,’ but more recently my answer has been ‘I don’t know’ but that’s the good direction to be going in. Don’t forget we’ve already been operating in Singapore for two months and before that we had operations in Germany, Greece, the Middle East and the Canary Islands. Just this week MSC restarted operations in Italy. So, operations are beginning. It’s going to take a while, and we just need to be patient, but it is happening.”
The positive sign is that there is huge pent-up demand for cruising, which wasn’t the situation after 9/11 and the 2009 recession.
“The question then was how long would it take to re-attract the demand again,” he said. “The question was whether the cruise market would ever recover. Those aren’t the questions we hear today. … The situation today is very different. The general economy is liquid and strong, the governments have poured unimaginable amounts of money to support the economies, and the public is clamoring for the opportunity to again have their experiences outside their home. People clearly have pent-up demand, and we can’t wait to satisfy it,” Fain said.
“Every day we see signs that people want to get out and away, and that pressure will help us once we can reopen and restart that light on the horizon I’ve been talking about in these conversations. It’s getting steadily brighter, and I can’t wait till we restore it to full brilliance. But for now, masks on and hands washed. We’re too close to stop now.”
