Member Info for MrMagic

You're just talking complete tosh and it's simply embarrassing.

Airline Bookings Surge, Buoyed by U.K. Plans to Reopen Travel

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-23/easyjet-ticket-sales-surge-as-johnson-plan-boosts-summer-hopes

"U.K. holidaymakers reappeared with a roar, showering airlines with summer bookings after Prime Minister Boris Johnson outlined a roadmap for air travel to return.

EasyJet Plc ticket sales more than quadrupled in the hours after Johnson said Monday that international trips may restart as soon as May 17. Tour operator TUI AG said reservations to Spain, Turkey and Greece jumped sixfold overnight, while Ryanair Holdings Plc cited Italy as another popular destination."

"Airline shares advanced for a second day as evidence mounted of burgeoning customer demand for the crucial summer season. While travel could open as soon as late May or June, Britons are hedging their bets, with the uptick concentrated on July and August. Price-comparison site Skyscanner said that flight bookings on Monday increased by 69% compared with the previous day."

A good YT video here explaining why past loyal cruisers don't want to cruise at this time and prefer to wait until the whole pandemic blows over and things return more towards normality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XykPTbuJJcM

All the expected things are cited.

They don't want to wear masks on holiday
They don't want to be subjected to frequent testing
They don't want to have to social distance
They don't want to have to make bookings to use a gym or swimming pool (because usage is restricted)
They don't want to be forced to dine alone (esp solo travellers!)
They don't want to be forced to take ship excursions to go ashore
They don't want the risk of the cruise being cancelled/aborted if there's a Covid outbreak
They don't want the risk of being quarantined to cabin for the duration

This is a really big problem for the industry make no mistake and it's a problem that isn't going away any time soon.

There's definitely a small contingent of people who will cruise regardless of all those restrictions, but I suspect it is a very small minority of the previous cruising customer bases. I doubt it's anywhere near enough to sustain the business. I can see no end in sight at this point in time. Sad time for the industry.

Get's more embarrassing every time you post Carrots. Baseless ramping will simply serve to put more and more people off. Makes the share look desperate. Meanwhile the real facts are:

Staycation stampede as UK prices soar and holiday hotspots booked up all summer

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/staycation-stampede-uk-prices-soar-23845205

"Cooped up Brits have been flocking to book staycations for a reopening of parts of the industry on April 12.
Hospitality businesses are reporting "huge demand" for the restart amid mounting signs the vaccination programme can trigger a restart of self-catering accommodation trips and outdoor eating and drinking at pubs, restaurants and cafes.
Hotels and B&Bs are expected to reopen from May 17. But there were warning holiday prices could soar."

That's where the money is. People want freedom. People want safety, being only amongst their own family and friends who they can trust not to have Covid. They don't want to be forced to wear face nappies. They don't want to be restricted about who they wine and dine with. They want the freedom to go out and roam at their leisure and explore the countryside and local towns rather than be locked into boring cruise excursions which they would have to pay for.

Really there's just no comparison at this point. There's no real "cruising" on offer at this time, only a glorified ferry service shackled with Draconian restrictions.

The SP is clearly at the top of the trading range so no way would I personally be buying shares at this point in time. It will drop back to 1500 as night follows day and if there's a sniff of Covid on-board any of the short "seacations" the SP will drop faster than a lead balloon.

Shameless ramper here clearly looking for mugs to take his shares off his hands at the top of the peak. Why would anyone be tempted to give him easy money?!! SP will just keep bouncing up and down and currently it's at the top, not the time to buy imo. Surely better to wait for it to fall back to 1500.

BucketShopBilly - "It's pretty obvious Airlines and cruise ships will need to verify passengers have had 1 or 2 vaccine shots, or have had covid within x months."

Vaccination makes no tangible difference so it's pointless mandating them and every scientist knows it which is why cruise lines are rethinking. Vaccinated people can and will still carry and spread the virus. Those people who have already had Covid are by a country mile the safest people to be around, their immunity is strong and lasting. Cruise lines and airlines alike just need to test people before boarding using quick and highly reliable testing kits.

BucketShopBlly - "The airlines and ship owners can bar anyone from getting on board if they want, for any reason as far as I am aware. It's their ship, or their plane and who gets on is up to them. They will insist on proof of at least one jab I think, and quite probably two"

Yep, cruise ships are a law unto themselves. Passengers do not have the same rights and protections at sea that they have on land in their home country. This has always been the case.
Requiring vaccinations as stated above is an exercise in unscientific futility and would simply cut out a sizable proportion of the customer base, which at a time when the industry has been decimated and needs to entice people back, would just be financial suicide. Lunacy.

It's rather comical seeing you hop up and down on 4% movements in the SP. Show's you're rather green in the gills TBH. The debt levels here are very significant and the amounts of cash being haemmorhaged every month are colossal. As such this is never going to be a quick riser. It's a long long slow haul to recovery that will take 2 to 3 years imho.

If you'd stuck your money elsewhere instead of peddling this plodder you could have doubled your money by now ! Plus there remains the risk, and TBH likelihood, that there WILL be outbreaks of Covid on ships sailing this year and that will hit the press and negatively impact the SP. Bit of a ticking timebomb. Other shares don't have that same risk TBH. DYOR

BucketShopBilly - "Cruise and the ship can simply load up he passengers and sail elsewhere to another green zone country."

If the ship gets an outbreak of Covid on-board then no, it can't do that. It will be forced to sit in the ocean bobbing up and down going nowhere until they can find a port willing to allow passengers to disembark and when they do they will likely be quarantined on-shore for 14 days before being flown home (which is unacceptable to those people who never fly) or they will be quarantined in hotels on returning to Blighty. You've repeatedly demonstrated that you don't know the first thing about cruising and are just here to ramp, repeating the same sound bites over and over.

Flying and cruising are subject to similar restrictions. They will both require extensive testing before travel and quarantining will be required if there are any outbreaks. With flying of course the resolution is much quicker. You're only in the company of others for a hour or two so your risks of being involved in a Covid outbreak are extremely small. On a ship you're in the company of 1000s of passengers and 1000s of staff in a confined environment for 1-2 weeks. A very different prospect. The movement of ships at ports is tightly managed. You can't just arbitrarily decide to go pop into Gibraltar if Portugal suddenly refused cruise ships. There will be other ships already booked to use the berths. The next available port could be a fair distance away which affects the fuel costs. It can be done, and most cruisers will have witnessed port itinerary changes at times, but it's nothing like as simple as you try to make out.

You're also wrong about incurring costs because your travel insurance will cover any costs of hotel quarantining and repatriation and you won't be able to travel without that insurance in place.

It is the land based holiday companies that are going to be utterly swamped. Holiday cottages and lets and hotels will be inundated this year and the next as lockdowns are lifted. It will be a total bun fight.

The other thing you fail to account for is that the pandemic has seen millions of jobs lost and many businesses collapse and so many people are barely treading water with little to no income and the possibility of their houses being repossessed. Such people can't afford the luxury of a cruise. If they go anywhere it will be a cheap hotel, holiday let by the seaside.

@willibobs I think 6-12 months is way too optimistic.

Without a doubt I think if cruise lines could do what they want they would be offering cruises all over the place but they appear to be beholden to higher powers and enforced "no sail" orders and the like so they are effectively shackled and bound and if they want to keep the business going it currently has to be on the terms of those higher powers. Hence we have all the undesirable restrictions and worrying "Diamond Princess" style protocols hanging over proceedings like a dark rain cloud. That's the real issue here.

I maintain that actually the majority of cruisers are not remotely worried about getting Covid on ships. What worries them more are the Draconian protocols the cruise lines are being forced to implement because of the CDC Conditional Sail order. The possibility that ALL passengers could be quarantined to their cabins if there is an outbreak on-board. Being quarantined yourself if you get sick is nothing strange to cruisers. People used to regularly get Norovirus and knew that when they did they would be quarantined for 48-72hrs. But even when many people got Norovirus on a ship at no stage did they ever order EVERY single passenger to stay in their cabins. That's just unheard of and is a Draconian threat that I suspect is totally unacceptable to most cruisers at this point. Without a doubt there WILL be cases of Covid on-board ships. It simply needs to be accepted. I don't want my own holiday ruined through that person's plight. I don't want to find myself quarantined to cabin because of someone else being sick. So we have to get that problem resolved. We have to just quarantine the sick person, not everyone else.

Essentially what you have at present with "cruising" is the same situation we have on land. i.e. Draconian lockdown regime. All seems ok until Covid cases start to appear and then the ship goes into total lockdown. I'm sorry but we've put up with that catastrophically damaging lockdown strategy enough already and most people have had enough of it. It has serious mental health impacts and lots of collateral damage. I most certainly don't want it on a holiday !

If people think they've had a tough time going stir crazy in the comfort of their own homes during the lockdowns well they haven't seen anything yet! Try enduring lockdown in ONE TINY ROOM, your cabin, for any significant length of time. Imagine if it was an inside cabin, no windows, just 4 walls closing in !! Imagine if you had a bored child with you ! Doesn't bear thinking about. Read the testimonies of people who endured that last year.

Cruising has a very long way to go yet to recover.

@supermabs My response wasn't remotely meant hostile so apologies if you took it that way. Your view is as welcome as the next man's. Or woman's !

Nice to see some realism from Mathsprof amidst the laughable 6yr old drivel from bucket shop rampsters.

@supermabs No, I don't think you are remotely right about staycations. I don't doubt that the very few "cruises" on offer will be snapped up by some desperate to get away because the places are so limited but anyone who thinks that represents a return to normality for the vast base of previous loyal customers is either utterly delusional or in complete denial.

The "starved cruisers" know what they want from a cruise, have always known what they want from a cruise and have always selected cruises based on those requirements. They include being able to wine and dine with lots of different people, being able to wander freely off the ship any time whilst in port, being able to take our own chances with bugs and viruses rather than be nanny state managed and being free to wander about without wearing face nappies.

Those basic requirements are no longer available. Cruising no longer exists at the moment. What sits in its place is a poor man's glorified ferry service full of restrictions and which lacks all the primary joys of a cruise. Anyone who has cruised significantly knows this and doesn't fall for the ramping spiel spouted by the bucket shop fools. It's a sad time for the industry and we all hope it will get through this but what is on offer right now is not cruising. It's like taking your Ferrari to the garage for a service and being given a Fiat Cinquecento as a courtesy car. It doesn't wash I'm afraid. "Starved cruisers" are not going to rush out in any great numbers for this new normal. No way Jose.

What they will do in droves is shell out for good land staycations, beautiful cottages and barn conversions in the countryside with log burners, outdoor hot tubs and total freedom. No swab testing, no mask wearing, no forced excursions they have to pay for, no restrictions on dining, free powerful internet Wifi, sole use of the facilities and no chance of being forcibly quarantined to the bedroom if they get the sniffles. Right now there's just no contest. If you can find a way to invest in land based cottages and hotels that's where you'll make serious money because that industry is going to utterly explode and demand is going to be astronomical.

As Mathsprof states, Carnival's monthly cash burn is colossal and it's hard to see how it will be countered with a handful of "seacation" cruises that they are practically giving away and with the massive backlog of FCC's they have to get through.
It's going to be a very long slow haul back to any kind of normality and the slightest bad PR event in the news will send the SP plummeting imho. DYOR

As reported here:

https://fortune.com/2021/01/11/carnival-cruises-covid-19-losses-q4-earnings/

"And there's little immediate relief in sight for the company or its passionate customer base of cruise passengers. After Carnival and its competitors saw their business grind to a halt in March amid the rising COVID-19 pandemic, they spent the rest of 2020 trying to survive by taking out new loans and selling off ships and shares. Carnival alone raised a total of $19 billion in debt and equity since March and ended the year with $9.5 billion in cash.

That was enough for company executives to emphasis the positive on Monday, promising that they can survive another year of near-total cruising shutdowns. "

As I have said repeatedly. This is a long slow haul recovery. Not a share that's going to suddenly go back to former SP levels. The debts alone will scupper that but also the fact that a good deal of the past cruising customer base are simply not interested in the new restrictive normal. It's no longer cruising. Much of what was important to cruisers is now not available.

Willibobs - "I'm thinking of buying in here simply on the fact that the share price is less than half of what it was in March 2019 just before the 1st lock down"

The company has taken on masses of debt since has it not ? In which case expecting it to ever reach former levels is naiive.

Reality continues to expose the ramptastic drivel spouted here. RNS today:

Carnival Notifies Guests of Cancellations
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/CCL/carnival-notifies-guests-of-cancellations-h18vl4c4ay21vfd.html

"Carnival Cruise Line is notifying guests of additional cruise cancellations and the extension of its pause in all operations from U.S. ports through June 30, 2021.

Booked guests and travel advisors are being notified directly of the cancellations and the options for a future cruise credit plus onboard credit package, or a full refund. To provide flexibility for guests booked on July itineraries that remain in the schedule, Carnival is extending final payment deadlines for all July sailings to May 31, 2021, with the ability to cancel without penalty."

and so the long haul continues

Thanks for the link khunter. It appears this issue is all over the place. Carnival's individual cruise lines ARE mandating vaccinations for some cruises as per the links I provided, unless Carnival are now over-ruling that in which case they haven't updated the websites of the cruise lines.

Notable that your article says Carnival found it "largely unworkable " which means they fully intended to mandate vaccines but may just now not have a reliable way to determine who is and who is not vaccinated due to lack of IT systems.

I do wonder whether your article is only referring to Carnival Cruises itself rather than every cruise line under the Carnival umbrella. Great news if it's all cruise lines but I'll hang back for now to see if the other websites get updated.

RamperCarrots - "There will be Massive demand from people who won't be flying."

No there will only be limited demand because as I have tried to explain to you, as someone who knows what cruising is about, the "new normal" is completely unacceptable to a great deal of the existing customer base. Reasons are:

1. People don't want to go on a holiday and have to wear a mask. We have to wear masks all the time now at work, in shops and other places. A holiday should be a break from the norm not more of it.

2. Many people cruise to visit specific locations and ports and wander freely around them, at their leisure, shop for souvenirs, grab a coffee and watch the world go by, sample the local food in a restaurant and so on. This is no longer possible. You can now only get off the ship with a ships excursion and most cruisers know that ship's excursions are, in the main, boring, overpriced and poor value for money.

3. Many cruisers enjoy the evening dining experience of meeting lots of new people. Many have made life long friends this way. Restrictions on many cruise lines now prevent this. You have to eat alone with only your own partner group.

4. Vaccinations are being mandated. This is going to cut out a significant section of the customer base. It's a stupid move by cruise lines at a time when their business is decimated. It discriminates against people with natural immunity.

5. The threat of a Diamond Princess scenario still remains, all there in the small print and CDC guidelines/rules

6. If you are unfortunate enough to get Covid you're getting isolated to your cabin for the duration and could even get dumped ashore to a land hospital. Your travelling companions will be similarly isolated just to be safe. Holiday over.

7. If a given THRESHOLD of Covid cases is witnessed then EVERYONE gets isolated to their cabins, holiday ends and ship returns to a given port and people may then be detained on-shore depending on national measures.

8. The whole area of travel insurance is yet to be sorted out imho. Will insurance companies cover Covid? If so at what cost?

Way way way too early yet to know if cruise lines will survive this and whether there exists an audience big enough to cover the colossal costs being expended every month.

Khunter - "CARNIVAL CORP IS "NOT TAKING A POSITION ON MANDATING VACCINES AT THIS TIME"

Just lols. Where do they get these fools from to try and ramp shares?!!!!

Vaccinations are mandatory on a number of Carnival owned cruise lines, haven't checked them all but here's 3:

https://www.princess.com/news/notices_and_advisories/notices/cdc-travel-advisories.html

PRINCESS
Princess Cruises will only allow vaccinated Brits on its UK sailings this summer
https://www.mirror.co.uk/travel/cruises/princess-cruises-only-allow-vaccinated-23757943

CUNARD
Cunard confirms vaccine requirement for UK cruise programme
https://www.ttgmedia.com/news/news/cunard-confirms-vaccine-requirement-for-uk-cruise-programme-27906

P&O CRUISES
https://www.pocruises.com/cruise-with-confidence
"Given the advanced progress of the UK vaccination programme, and strong expressed preference on the part of our guests for this limited series of UK coastal cruises, these sailing's on Britannia and Iona will be for UK resident COVID-19 vaccinated guests only"

PI's here need to really be very careful because rampers here are both clueless and haven't stepped on a cruise ship in their life. They are completely ignorant of what cruisers want and just live in a fantasy world of their own imagination which is about as far from reality as they can get.

Still spouting the sill sound bites. It's getting seriously comical now. Every time the SP falls back downand rises again by 3%-4% you come on saying things are about to turn around and take off. It's really very lame. And you continue to display a complete ignorance of the cruising world and cruising mentality.

Why would anyone want to shell out £1000s on a cruise to find that the ship cant dock at the ports it is supposed to go to??? Cruise ports and destinations are a huge part of why people cruise. Bad enough that they no longer have the freedom to get off and wander freely at ports and have to take a ship excursion but missing the ports altogether would be extremely undesirable to most. Really who wants a cruise "at sea" going absolutely nowhere??? I would suggest only a tiny minority and when cruise lines are haemorrhaging £millions every month in costs with ships doing nothing that limited market isn't going to be anywhere near to fix the problem the cruise industry has.

Canada is now refusing cruise ships until 2022. I suspect other countries may follow suit. Despite the fervour of cruise lines and port authorities to rake in the cash, the local people in European towns and cities simply are not going to want cruise ships coming there. You seem to be living in a total fantasy land.

lol "booming" ! Right oh.

https://bearmarket.com/carnival-cruise-lines-is-in-deep-trouble-going-into-2021/

Just sayin' it as I see it and as I think it is. Can't stand boiler room rampers like yourself trying to dupe PIs with misleading rhetoric.

Long term this should do well, but it will be a slow haul imo as the cruise industry will be suppressed for quite some time and still has a long way to go. The major restrictions currently being enforced are simply not going to be attractive to a huge proportion of the previous customer base so something will have to give. I can't see it "giving" any time soon. 3rd waves of the virus will come, Chris Witty has already confirmed it and other countries are still playing catch up.

The problem here is that its a ticking timebomb. Any rise is gradual and you have to leave your cash in for a long time for the reward yet the slightest sniff in the news of an outbreak of Covid on a ship will tank the SP dramatically. The SP went from 1200 to 1500 and back to 1200 from Nov to Feb. A 25% gain for those who hit the cycle perfectly. Since then it's gone up to peak at 1750 and then fell back to 1550. It fluctuates but not by that much. Meanwhile other shares in hard hit industries have bagged or multi-bagged and haven't had the risk of a media of baying hyenas just waiting to bite at the first sign of a Covid outbreak on a ship. So as said before, it is what it is. A significant risk and long slow haul recovery.

What's interesting of course is to observe that if you truly believed in the share and thought you were going to make good money then you wouldn't be here day in day out trying so desperately to cajole other people in to support your position with lame sound bites and boiler room ramping. It fools no-one, least of all me.

There are currently far better shares to make very significant and quick gains from. DYOR

@surfit

The CDC mandates I provided the link to also provide specific rules for "non cruise ships" like your situation. All crew are presumed to be effectively one group so all is good until Covid appears I guess.

But I don't remotely disagree with you about there being a contingent of people who are so fed up of lockdowns that they will sign up to go on a "cruise" pottering around the sea with lots of undesirable restrictions. There are bound to be some and given ships will be operating at very limited capacity the places will quickly fill up. But this is not remotely going to be anything like the same market as regular previous cruising and these punts around sea are simply not going to rescue the industry or be any kind of nirvana. A lot is gong to need to change to restore former customer cruising levels and I have no doubts that cruise lines would make those changes if they could but they can't. They are having to implement protocols mandated by higher powers. Hence it's going to be a long time before any kind of normality returns imo.