NEWS UPDATE: Australian Cruise Ban EXTENDED again! P&O Australia cancel cruising until April 2022

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Join my private Facebook group for cruise deals, tips and advice - the more members we have, the better we’ll get! www.facebook.com/groups/CTGdeals Head to my website for great cruise and travel deals: www.thecruiseandtravelguy.com.au Follow me on Facebook and Instagram: www.facebook.comn/thecruiseandtravelguy www.instragram.com/thecruiseandtravelguy In the face of the emerging threat of Omicron but armed with an incredibly high rate of vaccination, Australia continues to open its borders to international visitors and visa holders. At the same time, restrictions have been rolled back and wearing masks in public places like shopping centres is now optional. The country continues to make strides towards living with COVID and relying on its high vaccination rate to get back to business, but unfortunately when it comes to cruising, all levels of government are reverting to their favourite line - “it depends on the health advice”. This all come to a head last week when The Australian government officially extended its ban on cruising. The prohibition was set to end on December 17, which would have allowed states and territories to manage the resumption of cruising on a localised level, but instead the government announced that the ban would be extended by a further two months to February 17th 2022. Cruises were already suspended past February so it’s not an issue from that perspective, but what matters is that cruise lines are unable to properly plan for their return if they have no idea what the government will require of them. Had the federal government let the cruising ban come to an end today, December 17th, it would have allowed the next stage of the approval process to commence - basically the hot potato would have been handed to the states and we’d have been one step closer to a restart. Who else thinks it all fell into the too hard, not bothered, Christmas is next week basket. In response to this madness, there has been a renewed and very public push on behalf of the cruise industry this week, with major tv and print publications picking up the story. Headlines announced that it will have been more than two years since a cruise ship sailed with paying passengers from Australian shores if cruising returns in April as forecast. For once, it did seem that the general media consensus was that the return of cruising is overdue. Unlike the usual “floating Petri dish” commentary, many are cognoscent of the huge toll the cruising shut down is taking on the economy and at a smaller level, regular everyday people that are reliant on the industry for a living. We’re talking about a collective total of $10b missing from the Aussie economy because of this one shut down alone. Not small numbers. Last week I reported that Carnival extended its pause in its local operations until April, and as we suspected, P&O Australia followed suit. The line announced that it too would be cancelling all voyages up to and including April 16th which pushes their scheduled restart to the very end of that month. P&O pointed out that this announcement marked the 23rd time they had to break the news that their voyages would not be sailing as planned. Twenty. Three. Times. The company’s President, Sture Myrmell contended that without an agreed restart plan from the government, scheduling cruises is basically a no go. As we head into the upcoming Christmas break, the stark reality is that there will be no progress towards a cruising resumption until next year and on the chance that the cruising ban does come to an end on February 17th, that will leave our local lines with about 2 months to get their ships down under. I, and I’m sure many of you, had hoped that we would end 2021 with at least some confidence that cruising would be restarting soon but it looks like that Christmas miracle is yet to come true. Unless there’s some major developments on the cruising front, this will be my final news update for 2021 so thank you once again and I wish you all a very merry and safe Christmas and a happy start to the new year.