This week the cruise industry seemed to crest a wave in its pandemic saga, with major companies such as\u00a0Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd.\u00a0and\u00a0Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.\u00a0announcing long-in-the-making protocols to safely resume operations. Their new policies encompass\u00a074 points\u00a0that will sound familiar to anyone monitoring the travel industry\u2019s best practices: Both crew and guests will be\u00a0required to take Covid-19 tests\u00a0and wear masks when social distancing isn\u2019t possible, sanitation and ventilation methods will be improved, and contingency plans will be implemented to treat and quarantine sick passengers. Both cruise lines are now accepting reservations for a limited number of sailings as soon as November.<\/p>\n
But a straightforward set of best practices isn\u2019t enough to get ships back out to sea, says Doug Prothero, chief executive officer of\u00a0Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, speaking to Bloomberg from the Spanish shipyard where his company\u2019s maiden vessel,\u00a0Evrima<\/em>, is nearing completion. The luxury cruise brand was slated to see its first departures in 2020 but has deferred those plans until next April due to construction delays.<\/p>\n \u201cThings are going to normalize when there\u2019s a vaccine,\u201d says Prothero, in a departure from his industry colleagues. To be fair, he has less urgency to get business moving: His ships won\u2019t be ready to leave the shipyard until the spring, at which point Prothero is optimistic that a vaccine will be rolling out. (Experts say it\u2019s more likely\u00a0the end of 2021\u00a0to cover 20% of the world\u2019s population.) But with an\u00a0estimated $300 million tied up in building the company\u2019s three 298-passenger yachts, misreading the forecast could be costly.<\/p>\n To date, no cruise executive has ruled out the possibility of sailing before a vaccine\u2019s adoption. But many have wondered behind closed doors whether it\u2019s possible to conduct a voyage safely under any other circumstances.<\/p>\n