Italy, the first country in the world to restart cruise ships

Text by: Anne Le Nir Follow

3 min

The Italian government has authorized by decree the restart of cruises on the western Mediterranean from this Sunday, August 16. Obviously, very strict anti-Covid-19 protocols will have to be applied by companies because cruise ships are prone to contagion. According to the International Cruise Line Federation, since the start of the pandemic, more than 3,000 people have been infected and 73 have died aboard giants of the sea.

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From our correspondent in Rome, Anne Le Nir

The Grandiosa ship of the Italian-Swiss company MSC will be the first to set sail this Sunday evening, with a thousand passengers on board. It will leave from the port of Genoa bound for Malta, and will make stops in Civitavecchia, near Rome, in Naples and Palermo.

Before boarding, cruise passengers and crew members must have been screened, submit a health questionnaire, duly completed, and their temperature will be checked.

On board the Grandiosa , new sanitation methods are said to destroy more than 99% of germs. To respect physical distancing, the reception capacity, which in normal times is 6,000 passengers, is reduced to 70%. Wearing a mask will be compulsory in certain areas. As for medical services, they have been significantly strengthened.

This protocol will be applied to all ships of the MSC company which also provides for a departure of the Magnifica on August 29 from Bari, in Puglia, for a Corfu, Katakolon, Athens circuit. Practically identical rules will be adopted by Costa, the Italian subsidiary of the American group Carnival, whose ship Costa Deliziosa will weigh anchor in Trieste on September 6 for a 7-day cruise in Greece.

Gradual recovery

During the Covid-19 pandemic, multiple cases of contamination were recorded on board ships stranded around the world. Do these measures reassure cruise passengers? It is difficult to predict, after five months of forced break, how this sector will revive which, in Italy, weighs more than 14 billion euros and represents 50,000 jobs.

According to the words of the CEO of MSC, Gianni Onorato, published by the business daily Il Sole 24 Ore , “  the turnover of shipowners' companies will fall by 70% in 2020. The recovery can only be very gradual. Especially since the current market, deprived of American and Asian tourists, is mainly focused on Italians and French.  But the MSC company is optimistic: the plans to build six new ships, in Saint-Nazaire or in Monfalcone, near Trieste, have all been confirmed.

Will Venice still welcome giants of the sea? For the moment, no, since Costa and MSC are renouncing the City of the Doges, at least until the end of 2020. In fact, it is not so much to protect the lagoon but above all because of the very rigid sanitary protocol and threats of boycott by the Venetian Committee “No to large ships” which has been fighting since 2012 against the harmful effects of cruise ship tourism.

► To read also: Coronavirus: the cruise sector is trying to get back on the water

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• Italy
• Coronavirus
• Tourism

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