Carnival Bookings Drastically Increase After Announcing New Sailing Dates

Perhaps more so than any other line in the industry, Carnival Corporation, which owns Carnival Cruise Lines, Princess Cruises, Holland America and several other cruise lines, has been slammed by negative publicity in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic—1,500 positive cases on nine of its ships, 39 deaths and, now, a Congressional investigation into how the company handled the outbreak.

But finally, some good news for Carnival.

According to TMZ, bookings for Carnival cruises skyrocketed after the line announced it would return to cruising on August 1. A representative with Cruise Planners, an American Express travel advisory firm, told TMZ that bookings were up 600 percent compared to the previous three days before the May 4 announcement by Carnival that it would return to sailing.

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More importantly, the number of bookings Carnival received were up 200 percent over the same time period in 2019, when ‘coronavirus’ wasn’t even in our lexicon.

TMZ wrote that Cruise Planners said travelers were “not a bit concerned about traveling at this time" because many stated they are young and healthy, and just looking to “have some fun” after being locked down for the better part of the last two-plus months.

Beginning August 1, Carnival plans to resume cruises on the following ships out of the following ports:

—Galveston: Carnival Dream, Carnival Freedom and Carnival Vista

—Miami: Carnival Horizon, Carnival Magic and Carnival Sensation

—Port Canaveral: Carnival Breeze and Carnival Elation.

All other North American and Australian homeport cruises will be canceled through August 31. All Carnival Spirit Alaskan cruises from Seattle will be canceled, as well as the Carnival Spirit Vancouver-Honolulu cruise on September 25 and the Honolulu-Brisbane transpacific cruise on October 6. All Carnival Splendor cruises in Australia from June 19 to August 31 will be canceled.

"We are committed to supporting all public health efforts to manage the COVID-19 situation," officials said. "We are taking a measured approach, focusing our return to service on a select number of homeports where we have more significant operations that are easily accessible by car for the majority of our guests. We will use this additional time to continue to engage experts, government officials and stakeholders on additional protocols and procedures to protect the health and safety of our guests, crew and the communities we serve. We appreciate the understanding and support of our guests and travel agent partners and look forward to welcoming them on board as the environment for travel and tourism improves."