The Motley Fool:
NOT AS SOON AS MANY WOULD LIKE!
The starting line keeps moving for Carnival (NYSE:CCL) (NYSE:CUK), Royal Caribbean (NYSE:RCL), and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NYSE:NCLH).
Norwegian Cruise Line is announcing on Friday that it’s suspending all sailings worldwide that were to have embarked through June 30. It had previously expected to start sailing again on May 15.
On Thursday it was Carnival’s Cunard line announcing an extension to its canceled voyages. Some of those suspensions go all the way out to Sept. 8, encompassing the entire Alaska season of its Queen Elizabeth ship.
The slow creep of cancellations will continue. Carnival updated its cancellations on April 13. It won’t sail again until at least June 27, with some itineraries pushed even further out. Royal Caribbean is now next in line. It currently expects to start cruising again with sailings embarking on June 12, but that’s unlikely to stick.
Crashing waves
Paying passengers aren’t getting on a cruise ship anytime soon. The Centers for Disease Control extended its no-sail order for U.S. sailings earlier this month, and while that stretched the suspensions for 100 days — unless the CDC director or the secretary of health and human services says otherwise — it’s so much easier to bet the over than the under on that timeline.
Cruise lines aren’t necessarily the next sin stocks, but it’s easy to see why the industry is going to have a hard time restoring its image to get passengers back on its ships.
