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The year that followed the devastation wreaked by hurricanes Irma and Maria last September has been a time of great uncertainty in the Caribbean.
One ray of hope has been the relatively quick snap-back of cruise tourism to the region, bringing thousands of visitors and millions of dollars to areas where many hotels are still shuttered.
But the storms of 2017 took a toll on the cruise lines as well as their destinations. They left damage that cruise CEOs would rather not dwell on but will readily acknowledge when the discussion goes there.
“We had the worst year we’ve ever had with respect to hurricanes,” Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. chairman Richard Fain said in an Aug. 2 conference call with stock analysts. He said the number and, especially, the location of the storms were “particularly impactful for us.”
St. Thomas. St. Martin. San Juan. All three were hit hard, and all three have been mainstays of the eastern Caribbean, an area that served as the launchpad for the modern cruise industry in the 1960s.
Bookings for these areas slowed to a trickle last fall as potential cruise passengers digested video of the storms and their aftermath. Sales picked up a month or two later but left a giant bookings void behind, and lines with a big presence in the eastern Caribbean have been playing catch up ever since.
“There’s no question that we got impacted originally by missing a booking period during the hurricane season,” said Carnival Corp. CEO Arnold Donald. “And now for portions of the Caribbean — and we keep referencing Puerto Rico and San Juan because it was so obvious there — there is a hurricane malaise.”
That hangover was a key factor in Carnival’s forecast that financial results for the third quarter, which ended Aug. 31, would be no better than in 2017. (Carnival reports its Q3 results around the end of September.)
It comes amid an otherwise excellent year for the industry, with strong demand for Europe, Alaska and Asia itineraries and even for fresh bookings in the Caribbean, according to several cruise executives.
With the exception of Norwegian Cruise Line, the industry has restored service to the eastern Caribbean islands.
San Juan, despite continued struggles with its electrical grid, has 14 cruise ships calling or homeporting this year, four more than it had going into the storm season in 2017. St. Martin opened its Rainforest Adventures theme park with a 2,800-foot zipline two months after Irma came through.
In the U.S. Virgin Islands, seven big cruise ships are scheduled to call this week, including the Caribbean Princess, the Carnival Fascination, Royal Caribbean International’s Harmony of the Seas and the Disney Fantasy.
Even in Dominica, arguably the island most flattened by Hurricane Maria’s 160 mph winds, Carnival Cruise Line returned on July 10, making the first of 10 scheduled calls this year with the Fascination. The Dominica government invested more than $6 million in post-hurricane site reconstruction to ready the island for tourists.
Centralizing ship and weather data
Although cruise lines are well schooled in coping with the disruption of Caribbean hurricanes, this year they’re more prepared than ever.
Carnival Cruise Line, for example, has a new fleet operations center at its Doral, Fla., headquarters. Opened in May, the 35,000-square-foot center brings together 150 employees previously scattered across Carnival’s two buildings.
A 74-foot video wall made up of 57 high-definition color screens helps teams track Carnival’s 25 ships, weather conditions, engine performance and other data. Four rooms are reserved for critical situations.
The center’s director, John Rowley, said that a year ago when Irma hit, much of the decision-making data for Carnival was handled manually. Should another storm menace Carnival this year, the information flow and decision-making process will benefit from having the new center, he said.
Meanwhile, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. has contracted with Norman, Okla.-based Weather Decision Technologies for a weather risk-mitigation system, which was installed on all of its ships and in the Miami emergency operations center in November 2017. James Van Fleet, Royal Caribbean International’s chief meteorologist, said the WeatherOps analytical software will be used to “plan the safest route possible for our guests and crew members.”
When future Caribbean bookings ground to a halt last fall, consumers had two concerns, according to Fain. The first was that the destinations would be damaged and not ready for vacations. The second was a fear of more hurricanes of the magnitude of Irma and Maria striking this year.
The second factor has not materialized so far. In July, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cut back the estimated threat from 2018 Atlantic hurricanes, forecasting a 60% chance of a below-normal season, producing between zero and two major hurricanes, down from a range of between one and four when the season started.
Explaining the change in its forecast, NOAA cited exceptionally cool sea surface temperatures, the emergence of an El Nino weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean, stronger vertical wind shear and trade winds, generally cooler and drier air and increased atmospheric stability.
Source: travelweekly.com
