Finalcall

In the last few days travel bloggers have written about how several cruise lines, Royal Caribbean and Crystal among them, have instituted new blanket policies prohibiting anyone holding a China, Hong Kong or Macau passport (regardless of how long they haven't set foot in those territories) from boarding. Many discussions ensured in the comments sections on whether this constitutes racism, xenophobia, discrimination etc., but my post isn't about that. According to the numbers on Feb 8, 2020:

HK has 26 cases and 1 death for a population of 7.5 million people.
Singapore has 40 cases for a population of 5.6 million people.

That’s 0.00036% for HK vs. 0.00071% for Singapore. Meaning Singapore’s rate of cases per head of population is twice that of HK.

If the rationale for excluding the citizens of those three regions is due to the higher likelihood of them possessing the virus than citizens from other countries, then why didn't the cruise lines include Singapore in the list??

What’s more, they’re replacing affected ports with Singapore:

REVISED Friday, February 7, 2020 11:00am EST

Given the ongoing situation and the closings of several ports in Asia, Crystal is making changes to Crystal Symphony’s itineraries in February, March and April. We are finalizing the day-by-day itineraries as we are working to maintain as many of the original ports as possible. Revised itinerary details will be forthcoming within the week. Please note that any calls into Taiwan will be replaced with Singapore. For full voyages, we are maintaining the same departure and return dates, but beginning and ending in Singapore.

I don't understand this at all.

Finalcall

Just to be clear, Hong Kong and Macau are separate legal entities from mainland China and have strict border controls. Just like Singapore, Hong Kong has instituted a ban on mainland Chinese citizens from entering the territory effective 00:00 Feb 8, 2020, with several days' advanced notice. Airlines haven't been as drastic as cruise lines in curtailing Hong Kong. I understand the much higher dangers of disease transmission on cruise ships, so shouldn't common sense dictate that if they're taking such a drastic step with Hong Kong, then Singapore and Singaporean citizens should be banned as well?

Cassie55

I posted this earlier on the other coronavirus thread.

"We are currently on the Norwegian Jade. We left SIN on Feb 01 and are supposed to dock in HKG on the 17th. A few hours before we boarded HKG closed their port. We're now skipping the last stop (Hanoi) and with an extra sea day returning to SIN. (However the situation is fluid and it's possible this will change).

Yesterday they kept announcing all passengers who have come from, stopped over or transitted China, HKG, TPE or Macao to make themselves known to Guest Svcs. We later found out 105 people were taken off the ship and escorted to BKK (we're docked at Laem Chabang, 3 hours from BKK). It makes little sense as there's nearly double the cases of the virus in SIN as in HKG and everyone onboard has come from SIN.

All major Asian ports, ie, those with immigration and disembarkation facilities are now closed. Malaysia closed yesterday. It is a concern that SIN will follow and I don't know what will happen then"

FlyerEC

Most of the cases in Singapore are visitors from Wuhan and these patients have infected others in Singapore through some contact , this was before Singapore banned visitors from the PRC . Contact tracing is being carried out on those who do not seem to have direct contact with those who have come from China . At least 7 of these patients have recovered and they have been discharged from hospital .

Those returning from China have 14 days quarantine ( LOA - Leave of Absence ) they have to observe .“ As part of efforts to manage the novel coronavirus situation in Singapore , all work pass holders with recent travel history to mainland China are required to serve a mandatory 14-day LOA upon their arrival in Singapore . “
As Singapore is now on “ Orange “ Alert from Friday evening , temperature scanning , etcetera are in place ..
“ Disease Outbreak Response System Condition ( DORSCON ) level to Orange from Yellow “

Hope this helps ease your concerns .

boerne

CLIA Members are to deny boarding to all persons who have traveled from, visited or transited via airports in China, including Hong Kong and Macau, within 14 days before embarkation.
Feb 7 bolding mine

https://cruising.org/news-and-resear...virus-outbreak

mahasamatman

As are most (if not all) of the cases in Hong Kong.

There is no sense to it. It's a knee-jerk reaction with no basis in fact.

I'm sure there's intense pressure from the Chinese that any attempt to ban Chinese nationals must include Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan as official Chinese doctrine says these are all part of China and cannot be considered otherwise. Any company making a differentiation will probably be subject to Chinese sanctions.

MSPeconomist

I'm guessing that the ship is concerned that passengers from etc. China etc. won't be admitted to Singapore at the end of the cruise, but they can currently enter Thailand and fly to many places from BKK without quarantine requirements.

Happy

Do you guys not know what happens to Diamond Princess?

One Mandarin speaking old man from Hong Kong boarded the ship at Yokohama on Jan 24. He used the hot top and swimming pool on board. He left the ship at Hong Kong 5 days later.

Leaving at his wake, is now 71 confirmed cases of coronavirus patients, out of the 237 "close contact" persons the ship identified. Japan said it did not have the facilities to test all 3700 people onboard so only these 237 are going thru the tests which are running very slow. Each day they found some new cases, and the last 2 or 3 days the number made a quantum leap from only 20 to now 71. He did not tell others he had been in China shortly before he boarded the cruise.

Can you blame the Asian countries closing their ports? Can you blame the cruiselines for taking extreme precautions, in light of what is happening? All because China did not tell their own people of the serious pandemic almost after 2 months since the first case was discovered at beginning of Dec. Its spokewoman claimed China informed US since Jan 3rd and 30 times since then about the outbreak - yet it tried as much as it could to cover up inside China, fooling its people this infection is "preventable, controllable"... then suddenly announced a complete shut down of Wuhan. Since then there are over provinces / cities / towns / villages shut down, affecting 4 billions population...

With the above in light, how can you blame the cruise lines?

I am a dual nationality, have booked a Princess cruise TATL to Russia, and relying on my HKSAR passport for the 14 days visa free entry to Russia. I may need to look at how to get a Russian visa with my US passport - all thanks to the CCP's China allowing this novel coronavirus to spread totally out of control.

As of tonight, the very under reported "official" figure is over 40K confirmed cases. Death toll has risen above 900, surpassed the number from SARS in 6 months, since yesterday.

I dont blame the cruise lines taking this drastic measure, but they should make their decision EARLIER, and voluntarily refund the full fares to the WHOLE travel party instead of only the affected passengers. Those who are affected, you can go on social media to shame them if they refuse to refund the whole travel party who now decides not to go due to a member cannot go. You will get the refund. But you should not have to do that. The cruise lines should have done this as part of the new travel ban policy. That is the thing I think they should be blamed on, not the ban.

Happy

Exactly.

It has nothing to do with the number of infection cases but the immigration requirements. Philippines is the first Asian country refuses Chinese passport holders entry to the country. Singapore followed suit. Vietnam briefly did that but reverted. Thailand still opens its border, for now. BKK still has flights to / from China. These people need a way to fly home.

ranles

We on regent7seas navigator. Left Bali on Feb eight. Left behind couples who transmitted thru Hong Kong. See posts on Hong Kong forum. Fortunately we managed to reroute. San to lax to Sydney to Bali in fear of being hostage in Hong Kong or denied boarding on ship.

Finalcall

(bolding mine)

I agree, and I would take it even one step further. The cruise lines should cover the affected passengers' and their travel party's flight cancellation/rescheduling and ancillary accommodation costs. No matter what the cruise lines' motivation was for excluding all China, HK and Macau passport holders (safety, xenophobia, politics or whatnot), this is the most decent thing for them to do.

Based on anecdotal reports, Norwegian seems to be one of the worst:

Me and my wife lived in Canada for the past two years and she holds a Chinese passport. Seven days before our cruise, we received this email that she will be denied boarding. When we call norwegian cruise, they have bad attitude and told us that we won’t be refunded neither because we didn’t select purchasing travel insurance for incident like this. - Jack

I am a US resident alien with Chinese passport and havent been back to China for a while now. I booked a cruise with Norwegian Encore set to embark on 02/09 Sunday. I received a notification on Norwegians app yesterday (02/07) telling me that they are banning anyone with a Chinese passport. In anticipation of not being able to board, I called Priceline to cancel my cruise this morning. I called customer service multiple times and struggled to get an official response in terms of how I will get a refund. All they asked me to do was to write a complain email to their guest relations and wait for a reply. This xenophobic and racist policy incurred real financial consequences for my family and what irks me the most is the lack of response and sympathy from Norwegians customer services. Now we paid all this money for this trip and we don’t even know how and when we are going to get the refund back and most of all, it is hurtful to just target all Chinese. I am not a virus but human. - Aaron

Finalcall

An interesting observation. However, if so, wouldn't China react negatively to countries which allow Hong Kong and Macau citizens more travel freedom than Chinese citizens? Hong Kong and Macau have separate passports from mainland China, and their citizens enjoy visa-free access to many more countries. But it's an interesting thought nonetheless.

garykung

I can. I am a U.S. citizen born in Hong Kong. So even I have never traveled outside the U.S. during the outbreak, I will be still subject to denial even I use my U.S. Passport.

Badenoch

There might be no clinical or public health justification but cruise lines going a little (pardon the pun) overboard does make some sense. Cruising tends to appeal most to more anxious and less adventuresome travelers who at the best of times need the comforting security of the big boat and predictable North American-style food and accommodation.

Throw in a mysterious virus from Asia, a handful of ports turning ships away and one quarantined cruise ship in a Japanese harbour and anxiety quickly turns into panic. As irrational as it might seem, there are posters on Cruise Critic who are paying significant penalties to cancel European, Alaskan and Caribbean cruises scheduled months from now because of the coronavirus. It's not unreasonable for cruise lines to risk accusations of xenophobia to assuage the fears of the timid even if those fears are not entirely rational.

Happy

No you dont. Only if you use your HKSAR passport to board the ship.

We actually have beef in this saga - we have an upcoming cruise from Ft. Lauderdale to St.Petersburg Russia. We are relying on our HKSAR passports for the 14 days visa free entry to Russia as US passports require visa which is very cumbersome to get. We have not been in Asia since Oct last year. While we can board the ship with our US passports, but it would pose another issue - that we would need to use our HKSAR passports to disembark. Russia right now has suspended eVisa to all Chinese passports, but HKSAR and Macau SAR do not need eVisa due to the unilateral Visa Free agreements. We hope by April the pandemic would turn the corner to become less vigorous. We can only hope.

Meanwhile, we dont blame the cruise lines have to take such drastic measures because there are literally no way for them to identify where the passengers have been with Chinese passports or the HKSAR / Macao SAR (they would use the Return Home Permits not the passports.)

With other passports they can actually tell,due to the immigration stamps on the passports because most every foreigner requires a Chinese Visa to visit the country unless you are on Transit Visa Free regulation. Suffice to say, during this period and the suspension of flights, such types of transit would be nonexistent.

To those who are not actually affected but just posting due to the "political correct" thing, I would say you guys have very little concept on how big the effects and the consequences have been, on those ships that are sailing in Asia, or picking up passengers from China.

Here are the ongoing sagas of various ships -

Diamond Princess - the ship already is quarantined at Yokohama for days.
Updated at 2 p.m. ETThere are 65 new coronavirus cases aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship that's been under a quarantine since last week, Japan's health ministry announced Monday. With the latest cases, a total of 135 people from the ship have been confirmed to have the respiratory virus.
That is over 50% of the 237 "close contact" being subj to tests. Japan has said it has NO facilities / abilities to test all 3700 persons onboard, but the identified "close contact" people.

Holland America's Westerdam cannot dock at ANY port on its 30 days itinerary since it has picked up passengers at Hong Kong on Feb 1st. (Very stupid of them to make such decision when it is very well known how serious the situation has been, even though WHO the organization already sold out to China insisted there was no need to restrict travel... ). Since then the ship is unable to dock at ANY of the ports on the following itinerary - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam and Guam. They are basically adrift at sea until finally received clearance at Thailand where everyone can disembark and fly home from BKK. HAL is assisting everyone on the flights home. HAL also will issue full refunds on the cut short cruise plus future cruise credit equal to the amount the passenger paid for the current cruise.

Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Sea had 27 passengers from China boarded the ship at NYC for a 12 days Caribbeans cruise. They had to go thru some rigorous inspection at Boyannes NJ on Friday. They cannot sail on their next cruise until Sunday from Cape Liberty if they get CDC clearance - They are refunding passengers of the next cruise should the passengers decide Sunday sailing is too late for them.
The ship could not sail out on Sunday and finally sails today Monday - 3 days after their original schedule. Meanwhile they have found a crew died in the engine room but was said there was not related to the infection.

Both the health risk and economic impacts are tremendous.

For those who said the Chinese would boycott RCL and such, that RCL will lose the Chinese market for good - that remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the cruise lines priority is to protect both their passengers / crews and their shareholders. The costs involved are tremendous. So they make the drastic decision based on passports - Hey, this is the same approach Singapore takes, DAYS BEFORE RCL took the same approach - why nobody blames Singapore?

For those who want to point fingers - they should point theirs towards the China regime, and also those Chinese who are dishonest, who ran outside China even when they already had fever, then bragged on WeChat how s/he cheated the immigration (both China and France in this case) and now happily posting away in France! That was even before Wuhan took the drastic shut down measure.