No Australian Travel till late 2021

[Blackduck59]

Glad you enjoyed your cruise TeeRick, we are looking forward to our January 2022 cruise (Hoping that is enough time for borders to be open and restrictions to be minimized). We start in Auckland and end in Sydney. We will be in Australia for a little more than 2 weeks (that's not sorted yet). We have a much better "flight" pattern, short hop flight to Vancouver with a "contingency" law over (a few hours) until our evening direct flight to Auckland about 14 1/2 hours in the air. So while this up coming trip will be planned as a once in a lifetime I suspect we will be returning to both Australia and New Zealand after this cruise.

[travlr21]

3 hours ago, Blackduck59 said:

I suspect we will be returning to both Australia and New Zealand after this cruise

Probably! We were on the Millennium solar eclipse cruise in Oct 2012, was from Honolulu to Sydney with stops in Auckland and Tauranga in NZ. We spent about a month in Australia at the end of the cruise, in Sydney, Cairns and Brisbane areas. We need to get back there as there is so much more to see. This past winter we finally got back to NZ, spent 2 months there, had rental car and saw top to bottom, east to west. Absolutely amazing, and luckily we got back just before everything got shut down. We were on the direct flight YVR to Auckland. Very long, but worth the journey.

[TeeRick]

21 hours ago, Blackduck59 said:

Glad you enjoyed your cruise TeeRick, we are looking forward to our January 2022 cruise (Hoping that is enough time for borders to be open and restrictions to be minimized). We start in Auckland and end in Sydney. We will be in Australia for a little more than 2 weeks (that's not sorted yet). We have a much better "flight" pattern, short hop flight to Vancouver with a "contingency" law over (a few hours) until our evening direct flight to Auckland about 14 1/2 hours in the air. So while this up coming trip will be planned as a once in a lifetime I suspect we will be returning to both Australia and New Zealand after this cruise.

There is so much to see and do there!  And a huge area.  We thought NZ was one of the most beautiful and friendly places we have ever visited.  We just scratched a bit of the surface in Australia.  I would love to go back and do a land trip going north and then west out of Sydney and see the GB Reef and the northern territory tropical areas.  And then a bit of the outback to Ayer's Rock/Uluru.  Need a month at least.  This damn virus is messing things up!

[Realrunner]

So the thread about no travel to Aussie unless it’s safe.  Why won’t Royal Caribbean cancel it’s winter 20/21 cruises from Australia like its sister company Celebrity? Anyone in the know?

[The_Big_M]

3 hours ago, Realrunner said:

So the thread about no travel to Aussie unless it’s safe.  Why won’t Royal Caribbean cancel it’s winter 20/21 cruises from Australia like its sister company Celebrity? Anyone in the know?

 

I think it's about the market and logistics. Celebrity has fewer ships, and does longer cruises (~2 weeks for sailings here), and has more international pax given the itineraries. The international market isn't returning in that time, so the economics of only a few cruises without international pax meant there was no economic sense in retaining them.

 

OTOH, RCL runs shorter itineraries, with more locals, and also has ships based closer by (Asia instead of the US). Thus, there's less cost sending ships here for a shorter season, and if itineraries are modified to e.g. be intra-state or round trips, and only have locals, there's more likelihood of being able to do that.

 

Basically, it's still viable for RCL to operate here for a shorter season (as they were even doing at the beginning of covid), unlike Celebrity.

[TeeRick]

On my Solstice cruise a couple of years ago, the majority of passengers were from Australia and NZ.  In fact Royal Caribbean has based cruise ships in Australia so they could sail with only passengers from there (and perhaps NZ) and keep all of their travel restrictions in place from other parts of the world.

[emmas gran]

The Aussies love Transpacific cruises as they fly to US and cruise back, our Sydney friends love to shop and load up to cruise home. They especially like soft furnishings and bedding bargains in the large department stores

 

Liz

[The_Big_M]

Sure they do. Doesn't change that there are more international passengers on Celebrity cruises than RCL cruises though.