Hi ,
This past week was one of the craziest weeks I've experienced in travel since the pandemic started. So I thought I would give you an update and my perspective on what's going on in the travel world.
- Because of the continuing threat of omicron almost all parts of travel have had setbacks. In the past week there were cruise cancellations by several of the brands including Norwegian Cruise Lines, Carnival Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean, and Celebrity. Crystal Cruises, a long term high end luxury brand has ceased sailing or booking.
What's the issue? It isn't that omicron is spreading like wildfire on mostly-empty ships (see my last email about sailing for 10 days on Celebrity's Reflection). It's because of continued crew shortages, ports that open and close daily, and the downstream impact on tour operators. Cruise line logistics are very complex - everything from fuel, taking on food and beverage, working with shore tour operators and more. I hand it to the brands for what they have accomplished, but this past week too many parts of the chain either broke or were up in the air.
- Watch Caribbean sailings for the remainder of this year. Several cruise lines are shortening their traditional European season and instead bringing some of their ships to the Caribbean for year round trips. The Caribbean is so crowded with ships right now! There are far too many ships and not enough berths to dock the ships, which means crowded conditions in some Caribbean ports.
Here's my suggestion if you love the Caribbean because it's so easy to get to (especially for us Floridians).
- Avoid booking a sailing during the hurricane season even though this year there will be plenty of ships in the region.
- Think about booking now for winter 2023 and instead of a big ship let me book you on something like SeaDream, a large yacht that will take you to uncrowded beautiful spots where there aren't a dozen big ships hanging around and crowding the ports.
- Europe is opening up, but after 2 years of almost no tourism it's going to be a while before the tour companies come back, and probably half of them have completely closed up shop - they needed to eat, so they changed careers entirely.
This makes finding private tours difficult. This past week I met with a day trip tour company I love to use and heard how hard they have been working to put together their suppliers after 2 years of no work. It's going to take a while!
My suggestion for land tours is to let me book you with top-notch suppliers who have years of experience and contacts and often their own local teams in place as experts and guides. This is especially the case in Norway and Iceland.
The good news
If you have your required documentation for vaccines and your passport in order you can find some uncrowded ships and land tours to join over the remainder of this year. Europe will not be super-crowded this spring and probably not through the rest of this year. But watch out in 2023! My bet is that it will be very crowded.
If you want to stick close to home think about an adventure here in the US or to Canada. Most of the tour companies have some availability left, but bookings are in demand as I have said before. River cruises in the US are adding ships for extra sailings if they can find the ships to add. Don't wait if you are interested for any dates in 2022, let's get you booked as these are filling up quickly.
If you aren't in the mood to go anywhere yet that's fine, too. It's not too early to be planning 2023 and 2024, believe it or not.
More in a few weeks.
Sue Painter
Travel Changes Life
941-720-1842
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