As a result of the Covid 19 Pandemic, the global cruise ship industry is shut down. Much of the fleet sits idle at anchor in or near the Bahamas today. How large is this crisis?  The marks in blue on the chart below are all cruise ships.

Some research on line shows that there are approximately 200 large cruise ships globally.  About half are owned by Carnival Cruise Lines headquartered in Miami. Carnival owns Princess, Holland America, Costa, CUNARD, P&O, Seabourn and AIDA. Royal Caribbean is also based in Miami and owns Celebrity with a fleet of 41. Norwegian Cruise Lines also owns Regent and Oceana Cruises and has a fleet of 29.  There are also a bunch of other lines some with smaller ships. One can see that cruising has become a huge industry.  In 2018 it was a $34 billion industry with a passenger capacity of over half a million.  The ships employ more than 250,000 people.

I roughly calculated how much revenue they are losing during this pandemic. It is probably $650,000,000 per week.  No revenue but the ships must be at least partially crewed and maintained.  The losses to the industry are enormous.

Will the industry survive? Probably, but it may be very slow recovering. Some of the ships will be mothballed temporarily.  Some of the orders for new ships will be cancelled which impacts those shipyards.  Ports of call will suffer from the lack of tourists. Victoria, Vancouver, Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway will all feel the pain.

We have been on several cruises and loved everyone. I hope the industry can recover quickly

Just saying…