Cruise lines pull out of Turkey

Due to the current political unrest in certain countries at the moment, Cruise Lines are having to make the important decisions to pull certain ports of call on their Itineraries. Earlier this year we saw all port calls to Tunisia cancelled on Itineraries  following the attack involving MSC passengers during an organised tour to one of their museums. Now Celebrity and Costa have chosen to reduce their port calls to Turkey too. Celebrity are still operating their ships in and out of Istanbul, but have decided due to the current situation and in the interest of passenger safety they will not be overnighting their ships in Istanbul at the beginning and end of the cruise. Both Costa and Celebrity have replaced selected stops with Greece instead.

Obviously these decisions are not taken lightly and a huge amount of planning and organisation has to take place for this decision to be made. All my passengers I have contacted this week have been very understanding and even though their cruise itinerary bears little resemblance to their original Itinerary they are happy for the Cruise Line to be acting in their best interest.

For the Cruise Industry in general at the moment I do think one of the reasons we are still so busy is not only due to more passengers being enticed by the great deals, but also because their choice of short haul destinations are rapidly reducing. The economic situation in Greece and terrorist risks in Tunisia make me realise just how lucky I have been to work overseas for 10 years from aged 20 to 30 with the only threat interrupting my season being the odd hurricane or coach strike. I should imagine the resort training in certain destinations would be far more in depth now than in my day.

I don’t think I would be as eager to fill in my overseas travel application today if I had my time over again. It’s quite scary to think what the next 5-10 years will bring, but there is one thing I think will still be booming in 2025 and that is the cruise market.