Batman's brother

https://thepointsguy.com/news/will-y...7f6ea3d8069&ut

Interesting insights and analysis

.But we have some good news for those of you with thousands of dollars tied up in bookings for future sailings: The three big, publicly traded companies that operate most of the biggest lines, including Royal Caribbean, Carnival Cruise Line, Norwegian Cruise Line and Princess Cruises, aren’t in imminent danger of sliding into bankruptcy — let alone collapsing completely.

Indeed, all three of the companies — Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean Group and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings — currently have enough cash on hand to muddle along for well over a year without a single dollar of revenue. Really. It sounds impossible. But it’s true.
~snip

hedoman

I don't know. Can Gene Sloan read a balance sheet?

Randyk47

I agree. It comes off a bit like a PR piece for the whole cruise industry. If the WHO is correct and there won’t be a widely available vaccine or vaccines until mid-2021 then I really wonder about the survival of much of the cruise and the bigger travel and leisure industry. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/04/who-...mid-2021-.html Mid-2021 is 10 months away and even then won’t be a “light-switch” moment where the virus literally goes away overnight. If the virus is still wide spread and active then it will take months more to turn the situation around. Again if WHO is right 10 more months would mean big cruise line corporations like Carnival bleeding out something like $6-$7B with little or no revenue. Maybe they could survive that but the CEOs of the major lines are already saying it will take months if not years to get back to 2019 levels.

freecia

TPG's "new normal" cruise coverage has only caught my eye for all the wrong reasons. At a time like this, advocating for the consumer should be more of the focus than advocating for the cruise line unless there's clear paid PR, direct involvement with cruise line/association (like interviews which need to maintain business relationships), or stock ownership disclosure. Aka - the pre-COVID shilling shouldn't be the same as post-COVID shilling. I've followed some of them prior to selling to TPG and will unfollow soon since very little useful, interesting, and relevant content is coming out. It is starting to make me wonder if the denial or upbeat content guide borders on gaslighting. Several cruise line websites now prominently include current planned precautions so it isn't as if adjusting tone, approach, and article focus on peripheral things which are social distance safer (sure, talk about $$ reserved cabanas or touchless entry with NFC keys), refundable bookings, or cruise line vs third party travel insurance should penalize their business relationships if they have CLIA PR quotas to meet.

I do wish travel bloggers well, especially given difficult times, and still give clicks for interesting relevant content. I've subscribed to Avid Cruiser feed for a long while and prefer their current tone, content, and a little more transparency on what they're covering due to polling subscribers.

747FC

Just learned from a friend who is booked on two cruises (December 2021 and April 22) on Seabourn Venture expedition ship--they have been postponed until December 2022 and April 2023 because the new ship will not be ready for Antarctic sailing on 12/21.

Found this on the web:

https://www.luxurytraveladvisor.com/...livery-delayed

Glad I cancelled my 12/20 Quest voyage. They just officially postponed Quest operations until May 2021. That may be wishful thinking.

Jay71

IIRC, during one of RCL's earnings calls, their CFO indicated that they only needed about a 30% load factor to be profitable on their newer ships. So it doesn't seem like it would take a lot of pax to get the cash flow going again. Personally, I haven't seen a lot of great discounting on cruises in 2021 and 2022 either, at least on sailings we're interested in.