Carnival Cruise Line is in active discussions with the CDC to resume cruises in July. Carnival’s President Christine Duffy said that the cruise line is talking with the CDC in an exclusive interview that will air tonight on NBC Nightly News at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT.
Duffy talks in the interview about how there are no vaccine mandates for any businesses. Carnival Cruise Line wants to be treated like every other part of travel tourism and business in the country.
On the restart of cruises, Duffy said, “I think the CDC and the interagency groups that are working with us now have that same goal in mind as President Biden said, he wants to reopen America by the Fourth of July and we want to make sure that the cruise industry can be part of that reopening of America.”
When it comes to making vaccines a requirement Duffy added “And so I think that’s where we have the challenge of working through the details because, for our cruise line, children under 12 are a big part of the cruise experience in a summer, you know a family vacation, and as it stands right now, we wouldn’t be able to have kids under 12 on board.”
One of the reasons why cruise lines need to resume cruises is the large economic impact on ports around the country. Duffy stated, “There’s a huge impact obviously to jobs in the cruise industry but also what people don’t think about is all of the indirect impacts that we have, if you take a place like Alaska, where the bulk of tourism comes from people who sail on cruise ships…we employ about 500,000 people in the US and we’ve lost about 300,000 direct jobs at this point.”
The entire interview with Lester Holt and Carnival’s President Christine Duffy can be seen tonight on NBC Nightly News.
