According to Chris Gray Faust, Managing Editor of Cruise Critic the results of a recent survey with 7,000 respondents of cruisers and Cruise Critic readers, only 1% said that they wouldn’t book a cruise, demonstrating the resilience of the sector and cruisers’ determination to getting back to cruising.
The survey also revealed that cruisers would like to see a wide range of health and safety measures implemented in ports to guard against COVID-19 once cruising resumes with the survey, asking a series of questions about what they liked to do in port before the COVID-19 pandemic and what they’d like to see the cruise lines do to make shore stops safe in the future.
Among the new procedures that a majority of respondents wanted to see when returning to the ship, 74% said mandatory hand sanitization, 69% temperature checks, 69% mandatory mask wearing and 56% rapid COVID-19 testing, with respondents allowed to mark off more than one choice.
The survey also found that readers aren’t quite sure on whether they’d limit their time in port to a ship-sponsored excursion, if that was the only way to cruise and stay safe from COVID-19, s a measure that has already been implemented by cruise lines that have returned to service in Europe, including MSC Cruises and Costa Cruises.
In the survey, 43% of respondents said they would take a ship-sponsored excursion if that was the only way to leave the vessel, with 29% saying no and 28% unsure.
Another question asked Cruise Critic readers what would make them most comfortable getting off a ship in port, with 67% saying knowing that there were minimal COVID-19 cases in the area receiving the most votes, followed by strict protocols for leaving and returning to the ship at 63%, with 60% saying they’d feel most comfortable knowing there was a COVID-19 vaccine.
Even with COVID-19, most cruisers at 59% said they planned to disembark in port when cruising resumes, with factors involved in the decision and the foremost being whether they’ve been to the port before and liked it at 68%, followed by the attractions and entertainment available in the port at 63%.
A majority of people said that COVID-19 would be on their mind, however, with 59% saying they would consider how strict the protocols were to get on and off the ship, and 53% wanting to know the number of COVID-19 cases in the area.
The survey also asked readers about what they did in port and what kind of excursions they took before COVID-19 shut down cruising, with 28% having stuck to cruise line-offered excursions and most at 50% taking a mix of cruise line and independent excursions, with only 15% taking independent excursions.
The results also said that guided tours of some sort are the prime activity that Cruise Critic readers like to do in port, with 73% saying that they usually took them, with 69% saying they liked to visit independent attractions like museums or boat tours, while 66 % liked to shop, but a little over half of the respondents answered that they liked to go to local restaurants or bars while in port.
Finally, 41% of respondents are watching to see how the first cruises are going and how successful they are before booking their next cruise, with 38% waiting until the worldwide COVID-19 caseload goes down, and 37% saying they wanted to get a vaccine first, btu the critical % being that only 1% of Cruise Critic readers in the survey said that they wouldn’t book a cruise.
Tags: cruisers, Cruise Critic readers,COVID-19 pandemic, survey
