An overview of the impact of COVID-19 on the cruise industry with considerations for Florida

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2021.100391Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • The cruise industry has stopped due to the COVID-19 with huge impacts.

  • It is capital intensive and has dependently supply chain, employees, and economies.

  • Florida hosts the three major cruise ports and the headquarters of cruise lines.

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the current state of the world’s cruise industry, with a focus on the chronology and the main impacts that the COVID-19 has had on the industry. Florida is presented as a micro context of the pandemic’s impacts on the local economies of cruise-dependent regions. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the many infected ships in the first quarter of 2020, the entire cruise industry was stopped and a prohibition on resuming this industry was impose worldwide. This paper presents some of the consequences of stopping the cruise industry and the recommended protocols for resuming. Due to the dramatic impacts on the entire industry, some cruise lines are trying to resume despite the fact that the COVID-19 is not yet under control. The first aim of this paper is to cover the cruise industry and its importance for society, introduce the main facts of the COVID-19 outbreak, and the correlation between cruise ships and the spread of this disease. The second aim is to present the new pattern to resume the cruise industry and its challenges.

Keywords

Cruise industry
COVID-19
Impacts
Resuming and challenges

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