Author Archives: Steven Frankel
There are 96 articles by Steven Frankel published on this site.
When it comes to cruising, the sun is quickly rising. President Biden’s announcements that vaccinations will be available to every American who wants them, by this summer, will hopefully lead to a cascade of bookings.
But the news is even better. For many of us, going for close to a year without seeing a doctor very often has been an eye-opener. We’ve had to take more responsibility for our own health, decide when it was worth it to visit a doctor, go to an emergency room, or change our intake of some medications. Read the rest of this entry »
In sales, health, and politics, difficult questions are ones that don’t have simple answers. Here are the three questions travel advisors hate to be asked right now.
Will Vaccinations Be Required If You Want to Cruise or Eat in Quality Restaurants?
Today’s vaccines can prevent most deaths and infections from COVID-19. Once people are fully vaccinated, some will get sick and may be infectious—but very few will die.
Several recent polls have reported that 79%-85% of cruisers will get vaccinated if this is made a requirement; and that no more than 5% will refuse to cruise if vaccines are mandated. Most cruises are terminated if even a few persons become infected. Why would any captain, or CEO, risk seeing a half-billion-dollar cruise ship sitting idle if a combination of vaccinating, testing, and masking can largely Read the rest of this entry »
The Small Ultra-Luxury Ships (let’s call them SULS) are defined by their numbers.
They are spacious. The passenger space ratio is at least 65 for true SULS. We derive this figure by dividing the gross tonnage of the ship by the number of passengers. The passenger space ratio is the most accurate estimate of how crowded each ship is. Tight quarters are linked to how quickly a virus can spread among guests and crew members.
You can buy Berlitz Cruising & Cruise Ships (Douglas Ward) on Amazon for less than $20. It provides this ratio for the 300 cruise ships that serve the American and Canadian markets. If the calculated ratio is in the 30’s or 40’s, the CDC may demand that ship sail Read the rest of this entry »
According to the AHLA (American Hotel & Lodging Association), half of U.S. hotel rooms are projected to remain empty in 2021. Business travel is practically nonexistent, they say, and won’t return to 2019 levels until late 2023 or 2024. Leisure travel will return more quickly, but 56% of consumers said they see hotel stays as being linked to vaccine distribution.
One possible “cure” for this situation was included in an Executive Order released on January 21, the new administration’s first full day in office. It requires that quarantines, as well as pre-travel testing, be required of everyone who has traveled abroad, including U.S. citizens. Also, as of last week, 22 states also have imposed domestic quarantines requirements for people arriving from out-of-state, including their own state residents.
Virtually all the state quarantine regulations have proven to be ineffectual, since they don’t include any means of enforcement. No GPS locators, few checkup phone calls, few hotels with quarantine sections—only vague references to an “honor system.”
To make quarantine programs viable Read the rest of this entry »
Twenty years ago, I managed investment brokerages in Marina Del Rey, California. I relied mostly on technical analysis to guide my investment choices. This meant I’d examine the charts to see which stocks would make the best purchases. The stock market tries to predict a company’s earning, 6-18 months in the future. A good indicator is a stock’s performance during the past year. Since the event which has dominated thinking this year has been the pandemic, this might be a good way for travel advisors to recommend airlines to clients.
It’s lucky that The Motley Fool, my favorite stock pickers, also thought this topic was worth pursuing. They published an article last week, Investing in Airline Stocks. They included opinions and charts for Delta, American, United, and Southwest. They tried to tie the results to how the airlines are behaving during the pandemic. I added Qantas Airways to this piece, since their approach to the pandemic is entirely different from the U.S. carriers. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s early Spring. Most Americans will be vaccinated by summer, and outbreaks are being controlled. Most of the world is open for travel to anyone who is vaccinated and willing to be tested twice before arriving at a ship or resort. The pent-up demand for travel is triggering outrageous bargains, and most people haven’t a nickel on this in the past year. How do you ensure that you share in this good fortune?
If you’re an experienced agent with a huge book of clients, it will hopefully be like “shooting fish in a barrel.” But what if you don’t have a huge following, and you need to try something different from how you’ve marketed in the past?
A very promising strategy, which I’ll be trying myself, is to sign up for free personal and business accounts on Snapchat Read the rest of this entry »
If you book one of the December Australian cruises we featured a few weeks ago, your cruise experience may take a few different twists. Here are how things may go.
Before You Leave
- When you place your deposit, your confirmation will notify you that a Health Passport number will be required, and the fare will include an inexpensive COVID-19 insurance policy. MSC has been charging about $25 a day for theirs.
- When you make the final payment in August, you will be sent a scannable Health Passport QR code. The first part of your ID code will always identify you; the last few characters will be added in real-time after your vaccination record is checked and verified with a selfie, fingerprint and State Department passport. Health Passport QR codes are able to be generated by a smartphone and in kiosks that will be similar to those used in airports for Global Entry.
There are at least four effective methods for eliminating COVID-19 as an everyday threat.
- Use travel restrictions and quarantines to restrict entry into areas you want to safeguard.
- Use stay-at-home and masking regulations to prevent person-to-person spread.
- Use technology to identify those who may be infected.
- Use survey testing and vaccinations to provide long-term solutions.
In this week’s column, I’ll cover the first two of these topics. Next week, I’ll take on the other two. Read the rest of this entry »
It all started by the poolside bar, when a young guest who was traveling with her elderly grandmother tilted back on her bar stool and fell backward – crashing her head on the deck. Since she was semi-conscious and unable to stand, the ship’s captain requested an emergency evacuation from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, through which the ship was sailing.
A small powerboat from one of the Aussie’s famed Sea-Rescue Squadrons met the ship within hours, and the woman was evacuated to a hospital ashore. The woman did not do well, and a few days later, the captain of the ship asked the grandmother for permission to have the hospital do brain surgery. The grandmother collapsed with a stroke and had to be evacuated from the ship by helicopter. When both were stabilized, the grandmother and the granddaughter had to be evacuated to the United States by private jet and transferred to local hospitals. Read the rest of this entry »
With Australia’s friendly people, engaging wildlife, pristine beaches, and only one case of COVID-19 reported last week; this is the nation the small luxury ships will visit in December 2021.
In the first half of December 2021 (just a year from now), you’ll have the choice of boarding the Viking Orion, Silversea Silver Muse, Seabourn Ovation, or Crystal Symphony — arguably the finest collection of luxury ships ever assembled anywhere – for 15 or 16 night “all-inclusive” Australian cruises. In this case, “all-inclusive” covers all essential expenses on the ship except for insurance, airfare, and shore excursions. On one ship, in which at least one shore excursion in every port is free, the calculated cost was reduced by 10 percent.
By next December, the ravages of the pandemic will be largely behind us, but we will still have to take precautions and be very cautious. It’s likely that masking, vaccination certificates, and COVID-19 tests will be required to cruise and fly, and certainly to enter largely coronavirus-free Read the rest of this entry »
For travel advisors, 2021 will be divided into two seasons: Pre-Vaccine (Pre-Vac) and Post-Vaccine (Post-Vac). The Pre-Vac season starts immediately and will extend until (as Dr. Anthony Fauci says) about 75% of the people in the United States, and in the nations that we visit on cruises, are vaccinated. The Post-Vac season extends from then through the rest of the year.
Let’s assume that the dividing line will be at the start of the Memorial Day Weekend, May 29, 2021. Selling cruises that leave before and after that date will be entirely different. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re a travel advisor or an agency director, why not give your clients and staff a Christmas present that demonstrates that you have their interests first in mind. Many of us have helped clients make complete payments and place deposits on cruises that were cancelled. In many cases, the cruise lines have refused to return your clients funds.
When the nonsense of compelling clients to accept “Future Cruise Credits” (FCCs) in place of cash refunds started last spring, the common wisdom was that ships would be sailing by Thanksgiving and the cruise lines really needed the cash. Now it appears that our estimates for resuming cruising were off by 6-12 months or more, and the cruise companies have met their cash needs by selling off ships, laying off crew, getting additional financing, and issuing more stock. Judging by last week’s increase in cruise company stock prices, all of the “Big Three” will be COVID-19 survivors. Read the rest of this entry »
As everyone knows, last month the SeaDream 1, a luxurious small ship accommodating 112 guests and 95 crew, became the first ship to try to resume cruising in the Caribbean for 2020. Roundtrips were planned from Barbados, which, along with most Caribbean nations, has a very low infection rate from the coronavirus.
After sailing without incident along the Norwegian coast this summer, the SeaDream Yacht Club’s Executive Vice President, Andreas Brynestad, said: “Our health protocols are vetted by the Barbados government, our medical advisors are aligned with CDC rules (even though we are not in US waters) and with the Healthy Sail Plan, as well [as with] CLIA rules for cruise lines.” One proof of their sincerity was the fact that of the 53 guests that were on the cruise, 20 were journalists who would get the word out if the voyage was safe and worth trying. Read the rest of this entry »
Now that vaccinations are almost here, many long-term cruisers are transitioning from “Should I go cruising in 2021 or 2022?” to “Which cruises are likely to be the most satisfying and safest?” Most typical cruise junkies are over 65 and no stranger to maladies such as obesity, diabetes, and previous cardiac incidents. After a year “on the hard,” as sailors say, a lot of us are willing to take some risks to return to cruising.
If I’m describing you, your partner, or parents, how do you decide which ships to go on, and which destinations you to consider? What about a system for choosing between cruises? I’ve taken 20 features that are now included on some ships, and I’m using them as proxies for the quality and safety of a cruise. Read the rest of this entry »
In the past five months in this column, I’ve suggested ideas that I’m sure many readers felt were unrealistic. Let’s see how well I’m doing.
- The NIH is mandating shipboard laboratories that can test all guest and crew daily cruises.
- Some cruise lines are flying guests to-and-from port cities.
- Cabins are being left vacant on every other cruise.
- Crew members who were left stranded on the ships are finally going home with pay in their pockets.
- Residents of some ports are saying, “It’s not worth it to host large cruise ships.”
The NIH No-Sail Order expired this past Saturday, October 31. But read the details, and you’ll see that no cruise lines have permission to sail just yet. Before they’re permitted to sail, they have to build laboratories onboard each ship that can test all crew members weekly, document in detail how they will deal with any outbreaks, train crew members exhaustively, conduct practice cruises without paying passengers, and certify ships individually when they meet these and other requirements. And, if COVID-19 outbreaks occur on any of their ships, their permissions to cruise can be taken away, even in the midst of a voyage.
People magazine’s headline on October 31, for a story written by Georga Slater, summed up the picture perfectly:
CDC Says Cruises Can Set Sail Again, But Passengers Will Not be Allowed on Board Read the rest of this entry »
Since you aren’t going on a vacation this year, this holiday season may be the time to upgrade your travel camera or smartphone. The leading companies, Canon and Apple, have ensured you’ll have devices to choose from that were only available to professionals as late as last year.
The newest consumer cameras have Auto controls that can evaluate a photo opportunity, decide in a fraction of a second what the settings should be, and produce flawless images when you click the shutter. The price of cameras with huge sensors – capable of creating poster-sized photos and photos of the proverbial “black cat in a coal bin at night” – has dropped sharply. A year ago, these cameras cost over $4,000. Now they are as low as $999. Read the rest of this entry »
Imagine this scene on your next cruise:
Every few days, you’ll be met by a staff member who will spray your hands with disinfectant and give you a small device to blow into. Within a minute, it will tell you if you have become infected with COVID-19.
The results will be sent to your smartphone and the ship’s computer. If you’ve tested Positive, an appointment will be made for the Infirmary to see you immediately. They will retest you using a more sensitive but invasive test. If you test Negative this time, the warning notifications will be removed from your phone and the ship’s computer. Read the rest of this entry »
The assistance the cruise industry hoped to receive from the federal government has been put on hold. The White House announced last week that a relief package was no longer on the table, and the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA) said it was “deeply disappointed that the White House is dodging its responsibility to support small business owners and travel advisors.” Even if some bargain is struck at the last hour, it’s likely that the bill will focus on unemployment benefits paid directly to American workers; and payments to states and municipal governments who are bearing the burden of financing the COVID-19 crisis. Read the rest of this entry »
The Harvard Gazette ran the following headline last week: Cheap, frequent COVID tests could be “akin to vaccine,” professor says.
There now exists a new generation of inexpensive saliva tests that Harvard epidemiologist, Michael Mina, says, “can be as effective as a vaccine at interrupting coronavirus transmission – and is currently the only viable option for a quick return to an approximation of normal life … These are our only hope. We don’t have anything tomorrow, other than shutting down the economy and keeping schools closed.” Read the rest of this entry »
Southwest Airlines & Delta have been leading the way in keeping middle airline seats empty. Southwest has committed to it until at least November 30, and Delta has made the same promise until January 6. Both airlines have also committed to reducing capacity in the forward cabins by keeping additional seats empty. In contrast, other airlines are cancelling some flights to try to fill their remaining flights.
No one is challenging the fact that leaving middle seats empty, and reducing passenger capacity in the forward cabins, is significantly safer. Their complaint is the revenue they lose. Read the rest of this entry »
