Cruise Bookings Rise as Industry Appears to Turn a Corner

Cruise bookings for departures in late 2020 and beyond are rising week over week, a sign that the industry is slowly recovering from the COVID-19 devastation.

“Prior to COVID-19, we would typically judge our performance on how well we are performing against the same period last year. However, given these unprecedented times, we are looking at our bookings and comparing them week over week,” said Michelle Fee, founder and CEO of Cruise Planners. “We are beginning to see positive signs of improvement versus the last four weeks, which is encouraging. We do feel that we may be ‘turning a corner’ and seeing signs of better booking weeks ahead.”

Drew Daly, senior vice president and general manager of Dream Vacations, CruiseOne and Cruises Inc., said the companies are experiencing a “nice, consistent increase in volume” of both cruise and land sales for the past several weeks.
“The good news is our week-over-week booking volume for cruise and land bookings is solid,” he said. “In addition, after Memorial Day we have seen an uptick in bookings. Since the middle of May, new bookings without a future cruise credit are coming in stronger, whereas in March/April, there was a greater percentage of FCC volume.”

Daly said the bookings are largely for fourth-quarter 2020 and into 2021 and 2022. “The Caribbean is the main destination followed by Alaska and Europe,” he said. “Specifically, river cruising is seeing a nice uptick in reservations in 2021 and into 2022.”

Fee said the core destinations of the Caribbean, Europe and Alaska are the top three choices for 2021 travel.

James Ferrara, co-founder and president of InteleTravel and an advisory board member of the Cruise Lines International Association, said his network experienced a 300 percent growth in cruise sales since mid-April. He credited the surge in part to “Fear of Missing Out,” or FOMO, discounts and pent-up demand.

“Airlines, hotels, and cruise lines are in a media blitz about new cleaning technologies and protocols, health screening, social distancing measures and more – an array of creative solutions to consumers’ fear of contracting the virus,” he said. “Now, it’s the comeback trifecta: it’s about time, it’s a limited super-value, and it’s safe.”

He said about 35 percent of those bookings were done with future cruise credits.

As you’d expect, much of the cruise sales are to avid cruisers who miss being on the high seas and rivers.

“The majority are avid cruisers, and honestly, Boomers are leading the pack,” Fee said. “Cruise Planners agents have done a great job in helping those who want to move their trips from 2020 to 2021. So good news, we’re starting to see more new bookings (as opposed to re-bookings) in the past couple of weeks.”

Some clients may view river cruises as the place to restart their travels since the vessels are smaller, they operate close to land and within a country’s borders, minimizing the chance of being barred from entering and docking as happened with some ocean liners.

That’s part of the reason Riviera River Cruises is reporting a 300 percent increase in 2021 sales over 2020 bookings at the same time last year. It’s also a newer company in North America, so its growth is moving at a more dramatic trajectory.

“Moving 2020 bookings to 2021 is obviously one of the reasons for the jump in passengers, but that’s also combined with the fact that people want to get out and travel again and believe, as we all do, that we should more or less be back to normal by 2021,” said Marilyn Conroy, Riviera’s executive vice president of sales and marketing-North America.

“There’s also no doubt that Riviera, which was a relative newcomer to North America three years ago, is now gaining recognition. Clients are returning happy and telling their advisors and friends about our product and value – it takes time to launch a new brand in this highly competitive marketplace, but now we’re getting a significant number of guests returning happy and they’re spreading the word on our behalf.”

Riviera also only accepts bookings from travel advisors and refers consumers to professional agents.

“I truly believe that travel advisors are trying to be more supportive of Riviera with our policy to only accept bookings from them – after all, no other company puts all its sales efforts 100 percent into advisors,” Conroy said.

“We’ve received many messages of thanks from advisors who we’ve called and handed over bookings to at full commission, and word on the policy is now spreading. The response to our recent bi-monthly webinars, in which we provide advisors in-depth knowledge of our itineraries, is being very well received, too. The participation level is over 60 percent of advisors who receive our invitations, and that is about 15 percent higher than in normal times. This may be partially attributed to advisors having more time these days, but we’ve also received many emails and calls thanking us for doing the webinars and asking when the next one will take place. On Tuesday, June 16, my sales team and I will do a webinar at 1 p.m. EST focusing on how to grow group business.”