NEWS UPDATE: Luminosa Bookings, New Caledonia Open and Virgin Voyages Group Cruise!

Learn more or register your interest for the Group Cruise: https://www.thecruiseandtravelguy.com.au/eoi-group-cruise 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 Follow me on Facebook and Instagram: www.facebook.com/thecruiseandtravelguy www.instragram.com/thecruiseandtravelguy Shop tee shirts: https://thecruiseandtravelguy.myshopify.com Head to my website for great cruise and travel deals: www.thecruiseandtravelguy.com.au New Caledonia is officially open for business! The tropical South Pacific nation has finally agreed to reopen to cruise tourism. After having already been the ship to bring cruising back to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, P&O’s Pacific Explorer will once again take the role of breaking the cruise drought in New Caledonia. The ship was scheduled to sail to Vanuatu on October 1st, but those ports have instead been replaced with a call in New Caledonia’s capital, Noumea and Lifou. Despite reports from earlier this year indicating that Vanuatu had opened to cruise tourism, the country is, according to P&O, not yet ready to open to cruise guests. Hopefully Vanuatu is not far behind their island neighbours in once again accepting cruise ships into their stunning ports. In line with New Caledonia’s requirements, all guests will need to show proof of international travel insurance with both COVID and cruise coverage before being allowed to board. Major cruise lines are now welcoming unvaccinated guests onboard their ships, with Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and Carnival among the lines making the change. While in most cases vaccinated travellers will no longer be required to provide a negative test in order to board, unvaccinated guests will still have to, though in many cases a self administered rapid antigen test will be sufficient. The changes are dependant on where the ship is sailing to and from, as the health regulations in certain regions can still call for testing or vaccination. This is still the case in Australia for example, where government regulations mean that cruise ships sailing in our local waters must have a vaccination rate of at least 95% among guests. It seems our Southern most state, Tasmania, has launched a mission to ban large cruise ships from its ports. As reported by the Cruise Passenger publication, the Tourism Industry Council of Tasmania is calling for a 5 year ban on large cruise ships. The tourism body is specifically referencing ships with close to 5000 passengers on board, and not targeting small or medium ships that they believe help build a vibrant cruise destination. Looking at the majority of ships that call Australia home, the largest among them, Royal Caribbean’s Quantum Class carries approximately 4200 passengers at double occupancy. The majority of ships sailing here carry less than that, and without substantial infrastructure upgrades in our region, I don’t personally see how ships of a larger size will be frequenting our shores, let alone Tasmania’s, anytime soon. As some of you know, I was onboard Pacific Encounter’s activation cruise last week - watch the tour if you haven’t! And one of the things I noticed was that there were no Edge facilities installed - P&O’s range of adrenaline inducing features like the flying fox were due to be installed before her arrival in Australia. P&O had previously announced that Encounter’s twin racing waterslides wouldn’t be installed until early 2023, and they’ve now confirmed that their Edge facilities will be added around the same time. Carnival have officially launched a range of cruises for booking onboard Carnival Luminosa. The ship’s first scheduled guest cruise sails from Brisbane on Sunday November 6th and cruises are available all the way through until April 2024. The ship will conclude her first Australian deployment in April 2023 before embarking on a 22 night Transpacific repositioning cruise, after which she will sail her first season in Alaska before returning to Brisbane in October. Finally this week, P&O’s Pacific Adventure has arrived in Singapore on her way home to Australia. According to the NSW ports schedule, she will arrive in Sydney Harbour on Friday September 9th, docking at the Overseas Passenger Terminal for the first time under her new name and guise. Thanks for watching!