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Cruise capacity recovery to pre-pandemic levels 'unlikely' before 2023
Forecast finds ‘big three’ could have less than 50% of capacity back in service by year end and a recovery to pre-pandemic levels is unlikely before 2023
The latest cruise market report from Maritime Strategies International finds that net revenue losses for the big three lines (Carnival, NCLH and RCI) in 2020 and Q1 2021 almost match the accumulated net revenue gains of the preceding five-year period.
According to MSI’s calculations in its MSI Cruise Q2 2021 report Industry Reboot, the big three cruise groups should have approximately 45% of their capacity back in operation by the end of this year, equivalent to approximately 20% on an annual average basis. This forecast draws on data published by JP Morgan in early June which compiles start-up dates and deployment on a vessel-by-vessel basis for the three big cruise groups.
UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) earlier this year said two-thirds of the world’s destinations were still either completely (32%) or partially (34%) closed to international tourists.
Last year’s collapse in international tourist arrivals (which fell 74% year-on-year) led to estimated tourism revenue losses of US$1.3Tn globally, with recovery back to 2019 levels not expected until 2023, said MSI.
The shape of the recovery in international tourist arrivals projected by the UNWTO is largely consistent with MSI’s cruise passenger forecast. However, MSI said its analysis is based on pre-pandemic lower berth capacity and as such does not factor any negative adjustments to berth capacity as a consequence of Covid-related social distancing requirements.
“Prospective US cruise passenger numbers will only top the 2020 total by 1M and so be just a third of the record 2019 total of 15.4M out of a global total of 30M passengers,” said MSI director Niklas Carlen. “It will be a similar story for the European sector which will see passenger numbers grow slightly this year for a total also about a third of the 2019 one. On lower base figures, Asia and Oceania will recover more quickly but it is likely the global total will be just over a third of that achieved in 2019.”
The speed and scale of the resumption of international tourism will depend almost entirely on the decisions and policies of governments around the world. But assuming the vaccination roll-outs continue to reduce the impact of the virus and are extended to more countries around the world, there is no reason why cruise recovery should not accelerate through 2022 so that 2019 levels are largely matched in 2023, MSI concluded.
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