welcome back fighting to set sail
republican senators from florida and
alaska introducing a bill to get cruzes
back in business by july the state of
florida is also suing the cdc
to drop its restrictions but key
democrats writing a letter urging the
cdc to stay the course
in it they write they have quote
significant concerns about the prospect
of premature resumption of cruise ship
operations
it is absolutely critical that we listen
to scientists and health and
safety experts over the industry and its
profit-driven
executives josh leibowitz joins me this
this program this weekend the president
of seabourn cruise lines
the luxury brand of carnival cruises
josh great to have you
here this weekend thanks for being here
carnival has been threatening to pull
all of its cruise ships from the u.s
waters after the sailing ban was
extended to the end of june
how is the brand affected by this
well seabourn like you said maria is an
ultra luxury brand
and our guests have made it very clear
that they want to
they want to sail so the impact on
seabourn directly
is we have opened two itineraries
outside of the u.s
we have itineraries this summer in
greece
and in barbados so in order for us to
sail now
we have proactively made the decision to
offer guests the option to sail out of
greece or barbados this summer
okay so this summer we could we could
look forward to it i mean
late friday last week the cdc released
its uh
it's phase two of the long-awaited
technical instructions out of four
phases that are needed for cruise line
operators to begin
sailing tell me about the
issues that you're waiting on and and we
see that the state department issued
this new cdc
travel advisory it basically uh tells
americans that 80 percent
of travel destinations are are
offline they are encouraging americans
not to travel to 80 percent of of
countries
how are you going to deal with that
we're a long lead time industry in order
to bring 500 000 americans back to work
we need to know
in april that we can sail in july so
what we're trying to focus on is all
these alerts that are coming out 80
of the world shut to travel or or
restriction to travel let's say
that's for today and we're running a
business
that takes at least 90 days to ramp up a
ship
so i don't know that the um the focus
has to be on the future at this moment
three months out
yeah no i think you make a great point i
mean these are
long lead times in terms of firing
business up
but josh tell us what kind of investment
you've seen the company has put in
in terms of retrofitting so that people
can feel comfortable
getting on a ship again absolutely i was
on a ship this last sunday
inspecting myself what we've done as an
example i was on the seabourn odyssey
in fort lauderdale not far from where i
live i went into the engine room down
into the
air conditioning spaces and personally
inspected the
the um the uv lights that we've
installed on all these ships
we're enhancing the filters we are
taking steps with respect to training
our team members
and importantly we've also as an
industry
sailed close to a half a million people
since the pandemic
with little to no incidents of covet
spread
because we've put in place protocols
that allow for the protection of
individuals
i mean these guidelines are stopping
short of requiring vaccination
uh for for traveling passengers though
the language appears to suggest
that you want to see a vaccinated person
take the cruise how are you going to
deal with that in terms of vaccination
of of travelers right well as
carnival corporation has not taken a
specific stance on
vaccination of travelers we encourage
people to to be vaccinated if they're
able to get vaccinated
i can tell you that with the seabourn
itineraries that were operating out of
barbados and greece this summer
they will be open to vaccinated guests
well i'll tell you josh we all are
looking forward to a normalization
of our lives once again when would you
expect normalization
at seabourn when you could actually talk
about
uh the the revenue opportunities uh
wide open for you once again well for
seabourn we're
we are focused on this summer maria we
have opened up two itineraries for the
summer
in greece starting july 3rd and barbados
starting july 18th
and no other timetable in terms of uh
other destinations at this point then at
this point it's very challenging i think
we're all focused right now on getting
the us open you know there are
a half a million jobs at stake here we
have
major states like florida texas and
alaska
which are significantly impacted by the
shutdown of the industry
and while we're encouraged by the
conversations we need the action to
happen
in order to be able to open back up and
get people back to work
and allow people also really much needed
vacations i don't know about you maria
but
i'm ready for a vacation all right well
thank you so much the president of
seaborn
josh leibowitz we will see you soon
thank you josh