MIAMI – Two Royal Caribbean cruise ships will resume operations in June, ending a year-long interruption in operations due to the pandemic, but passengers 18 and older will have to test negative for coronavirus before boarding.
Celebrity Cruises, a subsidiary of Royal Caribbean, said on Friday that its Celebrity Millennium ship will depart from St. Maarten on June 5. One route has stops in Aruba, Curacao and Barbados, and the other in Tortola, Saint Lucia and Barbados.
Celebrity Cruises CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo said the return to the Caribbean “marks the timely beginning to the end of what has been a particularly difficult time for everyone.”
Royal Caribbean Group’s eponymous line kicks off a week later with a voyage departing from Nassau, Bahamas, aboard the Adventure of the Seas.
In either case, passengers 18 years and older must undergo a negative coronavirus test in the 72 hours prior to boarding.
Since the Caribbean is an extremely popular destination, “it is not entirely surprising that Celebrity and Royal Caribbean are finding their way back to the region,” said Colleen McDaniel, staff writer at Cruise Critic, a cruise ship rating website. “But this is huge news for the cruise industry and for the Caribbean itself.”
On the Dutch territory of Sint Maarten, tourism represents almost 80% of all jobs and almost 80% of tourists arrive on cruise ships.
Shares in Miami-based Royal Caribbean rose more than 2% on Friday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has suspended cruise operations in U.S. waters since March 2020, although it has issued guidelines for cruise ships to resume their voyages with conditional navigation certificates.
The Caribbean is a popular destination for Americans. Alaska too, but the Canadian government has banned ships with more than 100 passengers until February 2022, preventing many ships from visiting Alaska this summer.