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After all the shenanigans of the past year and a half, when the cruise industry has been vilified, maligned and generally sidelined by the Government, I never thought I’d say this: HOORAY!
From August 2, ships will be allowed to sail from the UK into international waters for the first time since March 2020. Thank goodness. I mean it’s been wonderful that cruises were allowed to get going around the UK in May (I have been saying for years that a round-Britain cruise is a fabulous way to see this sceptered isle of ours) but there is a limit to the number of times you can visit Portland, Dover and Belfast.
And in what is an almost alarming flash of joined-up thinking, the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office has seen fit to lift its ban on Britons going on ocean cruises. Finally we can cruise outside the UK with the FCDO’s blessing.
It’s about time. The ban, couched as advice but enough to put off all but the avid cruiser as it renders most travel insurance useless, was slapped on ocean cruising in March 2020 and has never been lifted.
Not even last summer, when for a few glorious months we were allowed to travel overseas (remember those halcyon days of no tests, no traffic lights and no 'scariants'?). We could sit cheek by jowl with folk we didn’t know on a plane, stay in hotels, party in Spanish resorts, but go on an ocean cruise? God no. That was far too risky.
And that has been the clarion call of the Government and its scientists for the past 16 months, ignoring all the extraordinary hoops cruise lines were jumping through to make sure their ships were Covid safe.
Masks on board when moving around inside, regular temperature checks, no longer being able to help yourself to buffets. They are all part of life on most cruise ships at the moment. And that’s after all the vaccination and testing requirements the cruise lines have put in place.
To board the Norwegian Cruise Line ship I’m currently on in Greece (cruising, not for the first time, in defiance of the FCDO), I needed to be fully vaccinated, provide proof of a negative antigen test taken within 72 hours of embarkation and test negative again at the port. I’ll also have to test negative before I’m allowed off at the end of the cruise.
And with slight variations, those are the rules across the cruise industry – none of it great and I for one cannot wait for the day when I can junk the mask – and they have worked. Since last summer, around 800,000 people have sailed safely on cruises around the world.
Where Covid infections have been identified – there have been a couple of positive cases, which was inevitable – the people concerned were quarantined according to the cruise lines’ protocols and the virus was stopped in its tracks.
Show me a hotel, airline or resort that is doing as much. Yet they were never branded unsafe and used by the Government as a Covid scapegoat in the way cruise has been.
It would be lovely to think common sense has finally prevailed in Government circles, but given Grant Shapps, the man who put the remote island of Tristan da Cunha on the green list, is in charge of transport that is highly unlikely.
More probably, the Government has realised it could do with some of the millions of pounds that the cruise industry earns for the UK’s coffers.
Whatever the reason, kudos must go to the Cruise Lines International Association, the UK Chamber of Shipping and the cruise lines themselves, which have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to come up with the protocols and then make the Government sit up and admit that cruising is safe.
It’s the safest environment in the travel and hospitality sectors, Bob Sanguinetti, head of the UK Chamber of Shipping, tells me. From the deck here, overlooking the calm seas in Katakolon and being able to wander ashore on my own (no bubble excursions here in Greece with Norwegian Cruise Line), I can only say amen to that.
The green light for overseas cruises is an unexpected flash of joined-up thinking – and long overdue
Finally, the Government has realised that cruising is no more dangerous than sitting on a crowded plane