Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and your job was illegal…
Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and your job was illegal.
Through no fault of your own, with no crimes committed, your whole industry was suddenly blocked by the government.
And then it was banned around the whole world.
But a few months later, some people in Europe were allowed to work again. Phew, that’s promising, you think. And a year later, most of the world was allowed to go back to their job. Well, everyone except the people in your country.
That’s what it has been like for cruising in Australia. And much of the travel industry that relies on international tourists.
It’s what I used to do: travelling the world and writing stories about it. But overnight, the dream job became a nightmare.
On Sunday, March 15, 2020, cruise ships were banned from Australian ports from midnight.
Eight hours warning. The day cruising died.
My phone rang. It was a freelance travel writer who I had commissioned for a story about a Tasmanian cruise. The State Government had decided to jump the gun and close Hobart port immediately. So they had to keep sailing up the east coast, looking for a port to let them in. (No Covid cases onboard, by the way.)
It was a common story around the globe over the next few weeks. Country after country rejecting cruise ships. Stranded at sea, thousands of people had no idea when they would get back on land. Meanwhile, the virus was spreading onboard some ships, passengers were confined to their cabins, and some died. And still, no help. Try another country. And then another country. Horrific.
As a managing editor at Cruise Critic, I had already been reporting about coronavirus on cruise ships in Asia since January 2020 – two months before the non-Asian world really cared.
And now it had woken up the world.
But I never would have thought, two years later, Australia would still be cruise-less.
Only a few local small ships have been allowed to restart. I was lucky to be invited on three of them. Unfortunately, most attempts were foiled by snap lockdowns or state border closures.
I had flown to Western Australia for one of them. When I was bumped at the last minute, I had to find somewhere else to stay for those two weeks. After also getting bumped from the rescheduled sailing, I gave up. Like most cruise passengers who have dealt with cancellation after cancellation.
But I made it onto two other cruises — the first cruise back in Australia, Coral Expeditions in the most remote part of the Great Barrier Reef, and a Kimberley cruise on APT’s Caledonia Sky.
As the late Meatloaf sang, two out of three ain’t bad.
But it’s not enough for cruise lovers and people whose income is tied to cruising: the cruise line employees, travel agents, tour operators, port workers, shuttle drivers, suppliers of fresh produce to the ships, businesses such as shops, cafes and accommodation located near ports. The list goes on.
Yesterday, Australia announced it would finally reopen its international borders to the whole world in two weeks. Anyone vaccinated can come in. But they can’t cruise here. Because once again, cruising gets singled out.
So, in 2022, as soon as possible, I am planning to head overseas to cruise and travel again.
It’s possible the cruise ban will be lifted next week, when it expires on February 17, but with an election on the way in May, politicians seem reluctant to associate themselves with it. One of the main reasons is the lingering blame for 28 Australians who died in 2020 when infected passengers were allowed to disembark a ship and spread the virus to 700 people in the community.
The latest stats for this year: Cruising has resumed in more than 80 countries, almost 7 million people have cruised since the pandemic shutdown, and the rate of Covid infection on ships is far below the rate on land. To get on a cruise ship in 2022, you need to be double or triple vaccinated and PCR-tested.
Yet you can get on a domestic flight in Australia, unvaccinated, without any testing at all, and then sit elbow to elbow with strangers in a confined indoor space with no fresh air.
Cruise passengers are exceedingly compliant, if you look at the American example. In the US, cruisers have a 95% vaccination rate vs 62% for the overall population, according to CLIA. The US cruise industry administers nearly 10 million tests per week (21 times the rate within the country itself), and positive cases on cruise ships are 33% lower than on shore.
But in Australia, we ignore all those facts and dismiss the industry as dirty.
Last year I interviewed a Queensland farmer who broke down over the phone, talking about his depression since losing his main source of income, supplying cruise ships. While I’ve had to move on to other ways to make money, other people don’t have that option. They need cruising to survive.
And many cruise fans need cruising to live. For them, a life without cruising is a life half-lived.
Let’s hope there’s good news for everyone on February 17.
PS. Back to the fun stuff next week, I promise!
I’ll have an update on my cruise and travel plans for 2022 after attending Travmedia’s networking conference, IMM, in Sydney.