Yahoo Finance’s Dani Romero joins the Live show to discuss the CDC dropping its risk assessment on cruise travel as COVID-19 cases continue to drop.
Video Transcript
BRIAN SOZZI: Cruise travel no longer carries a CDC COVID-19 risk warning. And that may be helpful in helping the battered industry recover from the depths of the pandemic. Yahoo Finance’s Dani Romero has more on this. Dani. DANI ROMERO: Yeah, that’s right, Brian. Good news for the cruise industry. On Wednesday, the CDC dropped its risk assessment on cruise travel. For two years now, health officials have been warning people to avoid cruising at all costs. But considering where we are in the pandemic and since COVID-19 cases on cruise ships have been dropping over the last several weeks, the CDC decided to give cruises that green light. And that green light is exactly what Virgin Voyages president and CEO Tom McAlpin was really looking forward to. He’s excited about the outlook ahead. Just take a listen. TOM MCALPIN: The good news is that people have been cooped up in their homes for two years. There’s incredible pent-up demand. We are starting to see it. Bookings are up significantly, 125% over just January levels. We are– last week, we had our record booking week. And we are going to surpass that this week. So we’re very excited about that. People just want to get out. The number one thing that people want to do is they want to travel. DANI ROMERO: And you heard it right there, Brian, that people want to travel. The CDC also saying that now travelers will have to make their own risk assessment when cruising. And the health agency is also recommending that guests check their individual cruise lines on vaccination status all before traveling. Brian. JULIE HYMAN: Dani, I’ll pick it up here because I wanted to ask you about pricing on cruises, right? We’ve seen pricing going up in a lot of different areas of leisure and hospitality, hotel rates, airplane fares, as we’ve seen fuel prices go up. What are we going to see in the cruise lines? DANI ROMERO: Yeah, specifically at Virgin Voyages, they’re not quite there yet. That’s what the CEO told me yesterday. They said fuel is a component of their cost, but not a significant part of their cost structure. And so there could be a chance, right, due to demand, but not necessarily– and if inventories go up, but not necessarily it wouldn’t be driven up by fuel more on the demand side. So there is a chance, Julie, that on cruising, the prices could go up. But we’re not there just quite yet, at least for Virgin Voyages. BRIAN SOZZI: Yahoo Finance’s Dani Romero, good to see you.