Cruise Industry Pushes Back After CDC Advises Against Cruise Travel
The CDC advised against cruise travel regardless of vaccination, but Gulf Coast agents argue ships are safer than land as Mobile cruises near their return.
MOBILE, Ala. — The cruise industry was pushing back hard in early January 2022 after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised travelers — regardless of vaccination status — to avoid cruise ships, even as a return to sailing from Mobile remained on the calendar.
The CDC stopped short of banning cruises, but its advisory warned that passengers can still contract and spread COVID-19 on board. It landed as a fresh blow to an industry still rebuilding from its pandemic shutdown through most of 2021.
Travel professionals argued the risk calculus looks very different on a ship than ashore. “Everyone is vaccinated, everyone has tested negative. Why is that scarier than going to the grocery store or going to a bowl game?” asked Andrea Miller of Sea It All Travel.
An industry trade group said it was perplexed by the advisory, noting that confirmed cases made up only a slim fraction of the people aboard ships and that the rate was far lower than on land.
Miller pointed to her own recent experience: four cruises since September 2021 with no passenger testing positive during or shortly after any of them. “Plenty of people 70 and over have sailed happily and confidently, and they’re not worried,” she said.
The timing mattered locally: a cruise ship was scheduled to sail from Mobile for the first time since the pandemic began on March 5, 2022, and demand had held up as travelers weighed the risks for themselves.
Miller added that shifting federal guidance was wearing travelers down — “the constant changing of the CDC’s guidelines” followed days later by reversals, in her words — and that current conditions were actually among the best for cruising, with ships running below capacity, more space between passengers, and empty cabins reserved for isolation if needed.
Mobile’s Cruise History
The CDC’s warning came on Dec. 30, 2021, when the agency raised cruise travel to its highest risk level, Level 4, as the Omicron variant spread.
The city-owned Alabama Cruise Terminal opened in downtown Mobile in 2004. Carnival Cruise Line pulled out of Mobile in 2011 and returned in 2016, and sailings from the terminal were halted along with the rest of the U.S. cruise industry when the pandemic began in March 2020.