Cruise Lines Getting Closer 2Crusin’
I’m up to my neck in Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCLH) so this is a bit self-serving. It’s also indicative folks will be sailing again & the news from this slice of the Mrkt is building momentum, IMO.
Short read, No specific investing info, but does continue building a trend.
Institutions own 53% Shorts holding is 5.6% Both data points are from Schwab FWIW.
Yahoo.Finance ……….. Bianca Padró Ocasio, Sun, June 20, 2021, 4:16 [PM](https://www.valueforum.com/ratings/rating.mpl?symbol=PM)
A Royal Caribbean International cruise ship left from Port Miami with 600 passengers on board Sunday evening — part of a test sail trip as the cruise industry gears up for a grand restart later this summer.
The two-day trip on the Freedom of the Seas is a simulation with volunteer passengers, many of whom are Royal Caribbean employees, set to test whether cruise ships are safe. It’s a major milestone for the cruising industry after it came to a sudden halt last year during the COVID-19 pandemic and has not sailed with passengers for 15 months.
The test ship is departing in the throes of a rocky restart for the industry, just two days after a federal judge in Tampa issued a 124-page ruling — throwing out regulations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that dictated what safety rules cruise lines must comply with to set sail. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis challenged the rules in court, arguing the regulations were unfairly targeting the cruise ship industry and cruise companies should be allowed to operate without any federal oversight.
Final phases give companies two options to restart cruises: Ships that have 98% of their crew and 95% of their passengers vaccinated can restart without test cruises; others must conduct a two-day test cruise to ensure other COVID-19 protocols are preventing outbreaks.
In a legal win for DeSantis, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday said Friday some of the CDC’s rules, which included a requirement for cruise ships to have COVID-19 testing labs on board, were “unprecedented” and “authoritarian.” Other more basic requirements, like reporting all COVID-19 infections to the CDC, Merryday wrote in the ruling, are within the federal agency’s authority. The current sail order will now be in place for Florida cruises only until July 18, and the CDC has until July 2 to propose more limited regulations in court.
Hodges Bethge said Sunday the Miami-based cruise line is still evaluating the recent ruling and how it applies to the company. And while DeSantis has insisted cruise lines will not be exempted from a state law that prohibits companies from requiring proof of vaccination, Hodges Bethge noted that Royal Caribbean International is still moving forward with some of their planned protocols they’ve been developing over the past year. The safety rules being tested out include COVID test requirement for unvaccinated guests, mandatory health screenings, online check-ins and contact tracing through CCTV cameras.
Royal Caribbean International has said it will require that passengers 16 years old and older be vaccinated on its ships leaving from all U.S. states, except for Florida, where the company will instead recommend that passengers be vaccinated. Hodges Bethge assured that Royal Caribbean employees have been trained on how to handle vaccinated and unvaccinated passengers, but did not say exactly how the company will keep track of passengers who are unvaccinated.
Although Florida cruises are banned from requiring proof of vaccination from passengers, recent test voyages have proven the importance of requiring vaccination to prevent deadly outbreaks that wrecked the industry last year. Earlier this month, two passengers tested positive five days into an eight-day cruise on the Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Millennium ship in the Caribbean, even though all adult passengers and crew showed proof of vaccination. Last week, eight crew members tested positive on Royal Caribbean International’s Odyssey of the Seas ship off Florida’s coast, less than two weeks since crew members on board were vaccinated. The company pushed back the ship’s tentative restart date by nearly a month in response.
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