Why don't cruise lines consider a "Cruise to Nowhere" option

[alley24]

I guess we could all stay in our rooms as well and enjoy our balconies if we have one, the future of cruising until the pandemic ends looks rather bleak to me,  cruising at this time sounds like serving a week in prison only with better food. 

[sanger727]

17 hours ago, Ravbo said:

OK.  If passenger disembarkation is required, then restrict disembarkation to ONLY  cruise line tours.

(ie the way MSC is doing tours in Europe).

This way passengers are protected with a bubble.

Need to be creative.  This is a unique situation that needs to be solved outside the normal thinking.

 

 

What makes you think that passengers are "protected with a bubble" doing a ship tour only? While I understand why MSC is doing what they are doing they are creating a false sense of security and it mostly just helps with contract tracing. They are starting with a population with low covid numbers who are traveling through areas with low covid numbers to get to the ship, and then giving a test for confirmation. Fine. Someone with covid will eventually slip through though, this isn't a "bubble". 

 

Try moving that model to the US. Someone from an area with high covid numbers is traveling through an even higher covid level area to get to the ship. You will have many slip through the covid test and an outbreak on the ship. Still certainly not a bubble. Cruise line tours will offer no protection to the passengers but may offer a little protection to the local communities if you prevent most interactions between the passenger and locals.

[chengkp75]

21 hours ago, proshopred said:

I enjoy being at sea & the ship experience....dining, gambling, entertainment...and just relaxing aboard a cruise ship....I do take shore excursions, but I have been to the Caribbean ports so many times that I don't need to get off the ship to enjoy a cruise....Many countries won't allow US passengers to disembark in their ports any time soon.....I don't want to wait for a vaccine.....I know this would not appeal to everyone, but.....Would anyone be interested in a cruise to nowhere if it was offered by Celebrity?

Okay, few problems with this idea:

 

1.  In order to get passengers onboard the ship, the cruise line must meet the CDC "no sail" requirements, failure to do so is what has stopped cruising from the US in the first place, so even if a cruise to nowhere was legal, no cruise line currently has permission to board passengers, and it doesn't look likely that they will gain that permission any time soon.

2.  As noted by others, while a "cruise to nowhere" is legal for a foreign flag cruise ship to do from the US, all crew would have to have H1B work visas, not the C1/D crew visa.  Work visas require application showing why the foreigner is needed in the US for work, are limited in number, and the current administration is not about to grant thousands willy-nilly for a cruise ship.

3.  Even in Europe, where they have restarted cruising, with cruises to nowhere, they are limited to ships flying the flag of EU member nations, not flags of convenience, since the EU has maritime cabotage laws just like the US (PVSA and Jones Act).

4.  Yes, "technical" port stops have been eliminated out of the US, the port must be advertised as a port of call, and passengers must be allowed to disembark, so then you need to get that country to allow passengers ashore (whether they travel in a "bubble" on a cruise line sponsored excursion or not), so this kind of defeats the concept of the "cruise to nowhere", as you are back to "no country wants to allow US citizens in".

5.  Just because an island is a "private island" does not mean that it is immune to the laws of the country it belongs to.  Entering one of the Caribbean private islands requires "entering" and "clearing" (health, customs, immigration) the parent nation.  Hope Island in Casco Bay, Maine, is privately owned, and the owners can freely travel back and forth between the island and the US mainland, but if they travel to the island directly from Canada, they are expected to report to CBP for customs and immigration clearance.

[AmazedByCruising]

1 hour ago, chengkp75 said:

Okay, few problems with this idea:

2.  As noted by others, while a "cruise to nowhere" is legal for a foreign flag cruise ship to do from the US, all crew would have to have H1B work visas, not the C1/D crew visa.  Work visas require application showing why the foreigner is needed in the US for work, are limited in number, and the current administration is not about to grant thousands willy-nilly for a cruise ship.

 

 

Allowing foreigners just to work on a ship won't make headlines I guess.  Who would really care if the US officially makes an exception for cruise ships while the crisis lasts? I mean, nobody wants the entire industry to die. The law could specifically list all cruise ships for which the exception holds, or say that they must be a member of CLIA, so the duckboat owners can't say they should be part of it.

That being said, who in their right mind embarks on a cruise ship now? This is a disease of which we don't know much yet, but we do know that many will know they once were infected until they die, and some will die within weeks. I'm not a doctor, but everything I see says it's better for your health to smoke than increasing your risk of an infection 1000 fold compared to staying at home by going on a cruise right now.

 

 

 

 

[drew69]

On ‎8‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 3:34 PM, proshopred said:

I enjoy being at sea & the ship experience....dining, gambling, entertainment...and just relaxing aboard a cruise ship....I do take shore excursions, but I have been to the Caribbean ports so many times that I don't need to get off the ship to enjoy a cruise....Many countries won't allow US passengers to disembark in their ports any time soon.....I don't want to wait for a vaccine.....I know this would not appeal to everyone, but.....Would anyone be interested in a cruise to nowhere if it was offered by Celebrity?

 

Go to a resort to do those things where if an outbreak occurs, you would not run the risk of being trapped at sea for weeks.  The issue with cruising is not just getting infected or passing infection at ports, it is bringing all of those passengers and crew members together on what is then a floating petri dish. 

[Fouremco]

10 minutes ago, AmazedByCruising said:

 

Allowing foreigners just to work on a ship won't make headlines I guess.  Who would really care if the US officially makes an exception for cruise ships while the crisis lasts? I mean, nobody wants the entire industry to die. The law could specifically list all cruise ships for which the exception holds, or say that they must be a member of CLIA, so the duckboat owners can't say they should be part of it.

That being said, who in their right mind embarks on a cruise ship now? This is a disease of which we don't know much yet, but we do know that many will know they once were infected until they die, and some will die within weeks. I'm not a doctor, but everything I see says it's better for your health to smoke than increasing your risk of an infection 1000 fold compared to staying at home by going on a cruise right now.

 

 

 

 

There are many aspects of the 1886 PVSA that should be re-examined. Some of the regulations made sense in the distant past, but not as they apply to the cruise industry in the 21st Century. However, between the pandemic and coming election, I think that there are higher priorities for the immediate future. Besides, as you say, who in their right mind would embark on a cruise ship in the US right now?

[npcl]

1 minute ago, Fouremco said:

There are many aspects of the 1886 PVSA that should be re-examined. Some of the regulations made sense in the distant past, but not as they apply to the cruise industry in the 21st Century. However, between the pandemic and coming election, I think that there are higher priorities for the immediate future. Besides, as you say, who in their right mind would embark on a cruise ship in the US right now?

Keep in mind that the PVSA of today still protects thousands of jobs.  Any of the ferry, tour boats, etc in the US are covered by PVSA.

 

Also the cruise lines themselves have not backed attempts to change the law.  The few places where they have tried and gotten waivers (mainland to Puerto Rico for example) they found the cruises to not be profitable. 

[Fouremco]

6 minutes ago, npcl said:

Keep in mind that the PVSA of today still protects thousands of jobs.  Any of the ferry, tour boats, etc in the US are covered by PVSA.

 

Also the cruise lines themselves have not backed attempts to change the law.  The few places where they have tried and gotten waivers (mainland to Puerto Rico for example) they found the cruises to not be profitable. 

I'm thinking of situations such a Hawaiian and Alaskan cruises. In the former case, a San Diego return cruise having to stop in Ensenada does little to protect US jobs, as far as I know. And how are jobs are protected by making a Seattle-Skagway return cruise stop in Victoria? I doubt that dropping that requirement would have any negative impact on the Alaskan ferry service out of Washington, but there may well be something that I'm overlooking.

[4774Papa]

On 8/20/2020 at 3:34 PM, proshopred said:

I enjoy being at sea & the ship experience....dining, gambling, entertainment...and just relaxing aboard a cruise ship....I do take shore excursions, but I have been to the Caribbean ports so many times that I don't need to get off the ship to enjoy a cruise....Many countries won't allow US passengers to disembark in their ports any time soon.....I don't want to wait for a vaccine.....I know this would not appeal to everyone, but.....Would anyone be interested in a cruise to nowhere if it was offered by Celebrity?

NOT interested in a cruise to nowhere.

We cruise for the travel, the ports.  Yes, dining and entertainment are of value, but not determinative to us.

[grandgeezer]

On 8/20/2020 at 12:34 PM, proshopred said:

I enjoy being at sea & the ship experience....dining, gambling, entertainment...and just relaxing aboard a cruise ship....I do take shore excursions, but I have been to the Caribbean ports so many times that I don't need to get off the ship to enjoy a cruise....Many countries won't allow US passengers to disembark in their ports any time soon.....I don't want to wait for a vaccine.....I know this would not appeal to everyone, but.....Would anyone be interested in a cruise to nowhere if it was offered by Celebrity?

 

Not us. We go for the ports. The time on the ship is just transportation. Lodging, food and drink are better, and cheaper back home, hence we don't do drink packages or specialty dining.

[AmazedByCruising]

14 minutes ago, npcl said:

Keep in mind that the PVSA of today still protects thousands of jobs.  Any of the ferry, tour boats, etc in the US are covered by PVSA.

 

Also the cruise lines themselves have not backed attempts to change the law.  The few places where they have tried and gotten waivers (mainland to Puerto Rico for example) they found the cruises to not be profitable. 

 

CLIA said they're not interested, and said they wouldn't earn more. Things are different quite different now. Also, there's more than PVSA on their list of priorities but being allowed to do X is obviously always better than not being allowed to do X so there must be more to it than "we don't care".  Of course they want to be allowed to do cruises to nowhere using the same crew, skip so-called foreign ports, don't want the hassle. Even if it's just the time spent by employees to find out if a combination of two cruises is allowed or not, PVSA is costing a lot of money. I simply don't believe it if they say "their bottom line wouldn't be affected", I think that it's a political thing where CLIA picks its battles. For now, banning plastic straws seems to be digested easier by the general public than for instance explaining how more American jobs on land are created by allowing foreign crew on ships that sail to Hawaii or nowhere in particular. (This would be such a good time for ships to make sure that everyone knows how many US jobs are lost (TA's, gambling machine makers, all the way to the farmers) because they're not sailing. If I owned a line I'd make an ad that starts with all such misery, and we know you miss us, but we'll be back soon and you'll sail safer than ever!). Anyway, PVSA is a very, very long discussion. 🙂

 

Re: the jobs, that's why I mentioned an explicit list of ships, CLIA-membership and the duckboat owners. I think your administration can perfectly make a law that distinguishes between what a cruise ship is (like > 500 pax, >0.5 crew/guest ratio) and what a ferry is. Also a judge is supposed to look up what the lawmakers really meant, and will say that a tour boat is not a cruise ship as meant in the article that says that Indonesian crew can pour beer on a ship that sails from New York and doesn't visit another port before returning to New York. It's hard to see which US jobs would be jeopardized by that (I recall a ship that can sail to Hawaii which had it's own exemption) . It's even harder to see if there are more voters who cling to those jobs than voters who like their cheap cruises.

[npcl]

3 hours ago, Fouremco said:

I'm thinking of situations such a Hawaiian and Alaskan cruises. In the former case, a San Diego return cruise having to stop in Ensenada does little to protect US jobs, as far as I know. And how are jobs are protected by making a Seattle-Skagway return cruise stop in Victoria? I doubt that dropping that requirement would have any negative impact on the Alaskan ferry service out of Washington, but there may well be something that I'm overlooking.

The issue is how do you change the law without having unintended loopholes.  

If you make the changes to allow those, then you open up an entire can of worms in other areas.

[Germancruiser]

I think those cruises to nowhere- some may like them some may not- nobody forces anyone to take a cruise to nowhere- may be the start up  of cruising out of the US - with a technical stop  only.

According to the fact the Tui Cruises added more and more of those cruises to nowhere ( Blue Journey they call them) they are well enough booked.

Of course thats not a cruise for everybody- my dear friends - which whom I cruised quite often would not dream to go on a cruise to nowhere. I went in late July and I booked again for early October.

If you like sea days- that calming and relaxing time on board a ship - away from all the hussle and bussle- it is just the thing for you. Sea days enjoyed on ship meant for 3000 passengers now sailing with less then 1500 passengers. For it was a wonderful and unique experience.

[npcl]

2 hours ago, AmazedByCruising said:

 

CLIA said they're not interested, and said they wouldn't earn more. Things are different quite different now. Also, there's more than PVSA on their list of priorities but being allowed to do X is obviously always better than not being allowed to do X so there must be more to it than "we don't care".  Of course they want to be allowed to do cruises to nowhere using the same crew, skip so-called foreign ports, don't want the hassle. Even if it's just the time spent by employees to find out if a combination of two cruises is allowed or not, PVSA is costing a lot of money. I simply don't believe it if they say "their bottom line wouldn't be affected", I think that it's a political thing where CLIA picks its battles. For now, banning plastic straws seems to be digested easier by the general public than for instance explaining how more American jobs on land are created by allowing foreign crew on ships that sail to Hawaii or nowhere in particular. (This would be such a good time for ships to make sure that everyone knows how many US jobs are lost (TA's, gambling machine makers, all the way to the farmers) because they're not sailing. If I owned a line I'd make an ad that starts with all such misery, and we know you miss us, but we'll be back soon and you'll sail safer than ever!). Anyway, PVSA is a very, very long discussion. 🙂

 

Re: the jobs, that's why I mentioned an explicit list of ships, CLIA-membership and the duckboat owners. I think your administration can perfectly make a law that distinguishes between what a cruise ship is (like > 500 pax, >0.5 crew/guest ratio) and what a ferry is. Also a judge is supposed to look up what the lawmakers really meant, and will say that a tour boat is not a cruise ship as meant in the article that says that Indonesian crew can pour beer on a ship that sails from New York and doesn't visit another port before returning to New York. It's hard to see which US jobs would be jeopardized by that (I recall a ship that can sail to Hawaii which had it's own exemption) . It's even harder to see if there are more voters who cling to those jobs than voters who like their cheap cruises.

 

 

 

PVSA has nothing to do with cruises to nowhere that is an immigration issue and under CBP. Nothing to do with PVSA. Change PVSA and you would still need the higher level visa's.  Actually do away with having to stop at any foreign port and you would probably need US work visa's for those cruises as well. Since they would only be calling at US ports. I doubt CLIA would be happy with that.

 

Are you sure about that?  Go ahead and write a replacement law and I will guarantee you that I can use it to build loopholes that you did not anticipate or I can attack the law as being  arbitrary  or too specific.  If you make it by route then it falls into the arbitrary or too specific category (i.e favoring one company over another instead of a level playing field).  If you do it by ship name same issue.  Once you go down that route you create a nice slippery slope that the courts love to play in and often twist law interpretations into things that look far different than was initially intended.

 

Even now the CLIA is not going to push for a change, because it is likely to backfire.  The last couple of times it came up there was more interest in congress to tighten the law not loosen it. In this environment I would expect a few more health and reporting requirements to be thrown in.

 

In this case no reason to, because by the time it is safe enough to cruise from the US, the restrictions on the other normal ports will most likely be dropped.

Edited August 22, 2020 by npcl

[smalltimecruiser100]

For me, great idea to begin cruising again but only after a vaccine comes out.  Also how about a test for the norovirus..That would be even better. 

[chengkp75]

5 hours ago, AmazedByCruising said:

Allowing foreigners just to work on a ship won't make headlines I guess.  Who would really care if the US officially makes an exception for cruise ships while the crisis lasts?

Who would really care about allowing foreigners to work in the US?  Perhaps some of the 14 million US citizens who are unemployed by the pandemic.  Maybe it is not their dream job, maybe it would not be acceptable to most, but perhaps it could provide income until the economy recovers and they go back to their regular occupation.  And, the fact is that even if all the crew were granted visas, they would still have to be paid at US wage levels, and have US taxes and Social Security withheld from their pay, so would the cruise line gain any benefit from hiring the foreign workers over US workers.

 

As has been stated, cruises to nowhere are specifically allowed by the PVSA, it is a CBP and Homeland Security decision on what constitutes "working in the US" that determines that foreign crew working on a foreign flag ship doing a cruise to nowhere from the US would need US work visas, not crew visas.  And, allowing foreign flag ships to perform strictly domestic US cruises (no foreign port call), would require them to have the crew to have US work visas again, so you are back to paragraph one above, where you either pay to have the crew get visas, and pay them US wages, or you hire US citizens.  

 

And while I won't get into much of a discussion of the benefits or flaws of the PVSA, as this is not the major reason that these cruises to nowhere are not allowed, I will make this comment to Fouremco:  Allowing a foreign flag cruise ship to cruise from Seattle to Alaska without a foreign port stop would not have a "negative impact on Alaskan ferry service out of Washington", unless you are one of the US citizens employed on those ferries.  Because, as I've mentioned to Amazed many times in this debate, as soon as Princess can operate a passenger vessel on a US domestic voyage with foreign crew, the Alaskan Marine Highway System will reflag their ships foreign and hire foreign crew, and this would be allowed under the international maritime legal designation of "passenger vessel" as any vessel that carries "more than 12 people for hire".  In fact, the AMHS, which is in financial troubles, pre-pandemic, would love this change, but its employees would not.

 

 

[Ashland]

Even before the virus or once there is a vaccine We would never be interested in a cruise to no where. Agree ... that the ship is transportation, food, lodging (love unpacking only once). We sail for the itinerary/ports.

[TeeRick]

I would much rather take a nice Drive to Nowhere, see some scenery, and not expose myself to COVID by staying in my car and wearing my mask when I go through a drive-through for lunch.  Then go home to my virus-free home.  Why risk an incubator ship at this point and turn over a lot of money for the price of that risk?  Just not worth it to me.

[terrydtx]

7 hours ago, Ashland said:

Even before the virus or once there is a vaccine We would never be interested in a cruise to no where. Agree ... that the ship is transportation, food, lodging (love unpacking only once). We sail for the itinerary/ports.

I agree, no way we would even take a cruise to nowhere. We hate sea days and look only for itineraries 10 days or longer with no more than 2 sea days. Sea days are boring, we do not use the casinos and the pools so staying in  our cabins waiting for meals is not for us. The ship is just transportation and the hotel with dining, the ports and tours are why we cruise.

[Iamcruzin]

Let's load up the ship with a bunch of Floridians and sail off to nowhere.  Sounds about as safe as a Covid party.

Edited August 22, 2020 by Iamcruzin

[Arizona Wildcat]

17 hours ago, AmazedByCruising said:

 

Allowing foreigners just to work on a ship won't make headlines I guess.  Who would really care if the US officially makes an exception for cruise ships while the crisis lasts? I mean, nobody wants the entire industry to die. The law could specifically list all cruise ships for which the exception holds, or say that they must be a member of CLIA, so the duckboat owners can't say they should be part of it.

That being said, who in their right mind embarks on a cruise ship now? This is a disease of which we don't know much yet, but we do know that many will know they once were infected until they die, and some will die within weeks. I'm not a doctor, but everything I see says it's better for your health to smoke than increasing your risk of an infection 1000 fold compared to staying at home by going on a cruise right now.

 

 

 

 

Issuing several thousand visas for unskilled to be employed as housekeepers, culinary etc. Would cause a huge protest from unions.  Justifying foreign visas in areas with high unemployment = political suicide.

Then you have the foreign port issue.  Canada is out and would Mexico or others accept thousands of potentially disease carriers?  

All this for a leisure vacation that employs relatively few in the US?

[proshopred]

The motivation for my original post was not to advocate changes in US laws .... I am simply frustrated that this virus has denied me the opportunity to enjoy the cruising experience which is one of the things we always look forward .....My wife & I have been on over 25 cruises..... We have had to cancel 2 as a result of COVID....We have made reservations for 3 more for 2021 - and likely we will be forced to cancel one or more of these - which makes me sad.....I long resisted my wife's desires to take a Transatlantic cruise....I always feared that I would be "bored" with so many "sea days"....now, I would jump at the chance to be on one...To me, a "Cruise to Nowhere" isn't something that could ever replace an adventure with stops in several ports....but our world may never be "normal" again....and I hope that cruising can return in some fashion....SOON!

[Fouremco]

13 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

I will make this comment to Fouremco:  Allowing a foreign flag cruise ship to cruise from Seattle to Alaska without a foreign port stop would not have a "negative impact on Alaskan ferry service out of Washington", unless you are one of the US citizens employed on those ferries.  Because, as I've mentioned to Amazed many times in this debate, as soon as Princess can operate a passenger vessel on a US domestic voyage with foreign crew, the Alaskan Marine Highway System will reflag their ships foreign and hire foreign crew, and this would be allowed under the international maritime legal designation of "passenger vessel" as any vessel that carries "more than 12 people for hire".  In fact, the AMHS, which is in financial troubles, pre-pandemic, would love this change, but its employees would not.

 

14 hours ago, npcl said:

The issue is how do you change the law without having unintended loopholes.  

If you make the changes to allow those, then you open up an entire can of worms in other areas.

 

Thanks @chengkp75, your AMHS scenario is not one that I had thought of, and it certainly reinforces the comment made by @npcl. Maybe they need separate provisions for cruise ships that wouldn't be applicable to ferries, but that too would probably open up another can of worms.

Edited August 22, 2020 by Fouremco

[chengkp75]

9 minutes ago, Fouremco said:

 

 

Thanks @chengkp75, your AMHS scenario is not one that I had thought of, and it certainly reinforces the comment made by @npcl. Maybe they need separate provisions for cruise ships that wouldn't be applicable to ferries, but that too would probably open up another can of worms.

Unfortunately, once you mix domestic voyages with foreign ships, you no longer inhabit the world of US law, but enter into international maritime law, and that pesky definition of a "passenger vessel" (it is after all, the P(assenger) VSA, not the C(ruise) VSA) applies equally to a mega-cruise ship as to a Boston harbor dinner cruise boat.

[drowelf]

17 hours ago, grandgeezer said:

 

Not us. We go for the ports. The time on the ship is just transportation. Lodging, food and drink are better, and cheaper back home, hence we don't do drink packages or specialty dining.

Same for us. The ship is our travelling hotel. No need for the constant pack/unpack/stay a few (or one) nights of the land tour. We unpack/pack once and get to visit lots of wonderful places. Those sea days with no ports are wonderful days to relax little after a flurry of port intensive days. We so looked forward to that sea day after doing an around iceland cruise where we were up early in the morning each day and off the ships until dinner time. 

 

We fully understand that many sea days are some folks best idea of cruising, but its not ours and as such its not something we would participate in.