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CEO: Home port will benefit Bahamas

Mon, Jun 14th 2021, 04:21 PM
Business Tribune Stories

ROYAL Caribbean Cruise Line set sail from Nassau during its inaugural homeport voyage on Saturday.

Russell Benford, VP of government relations at Royal Caribbean Group, said the cruise line’s home porting in The Bahamas is set to benefit the Bahamian economy tremendously.
#“So after 15 months of not sailing from the Americas, I am really, really happy that the ‘Adventurer of the Seas’ is home porting here in Nassau and she is going to sail her inaugural voyage from Nassau tomorrow (Saturday) and we are incredibly excited to be here this weekend,” Mr Benford said on Friday.
#“We have thousands of our guests who have flown in from all over the world, mostly from the United States and they are going on a seven night voyage from Nassau and a week later they will return and we’ll have another ship of cruise passengers departing from Nassau. So we are super excited.
#“Once those guests actually fly into The Bahamas, mostly from the United States … a lot of folks came in days ago …. so they were booking stays in hotels so you are seeing hundreds of hotel nights that have been booked by cruise passengers which is great for the economy.”
#Mr Benford said that Royal Caribbean is doing everything to ensure the safety of its passengers, crew, and the people of The Bahamas.
#“We are going to start at reduced capacity,” he explained. “We are going to start at a little bit less than 50 percent. The most important thing is that we return to cruising safely. We’ve worked for many, many months on a set of protocols to make sure that we keep not only our guests safe, but most importantly we want to make sure that we keep the people in The Bahamas safe as we return to cruising. We are also changing the way some things work on board the ship.
#“With respect to the cruises that leave out of The Bahamas our policy is that 100 percent of our crew members are vaccinated, 100 percent of the adults are vaccinated and we do have some children who are not old enough to be vaccinated so they have to go through a different testing protocol. So the protocol for the Bahamas based ships is crew and guests will be vaccinated with the exception of children.”
#Mr Benford said there are two types of cruises that will come to The Bahamas and both will be beneficial to the people of this country.

Russell Benford, VP of government relations at Royal Caribbean Group, said the cruise line’s home porting in The Bahamas is set to benefit the Bahamian economy tremendously.

“So after 15 months of not sailing from the Americas, I am really, really happy that the ‘Adventurer of the Seas’ is home porting here in Nassau and she is going to sail her inaugural voyage from Nassau tomorrow (Saturday) and we are incredibly excited to be here this weekend,” Mr Benford said on Friday.

“We have thousands of our guests who have flown in from all over the world, mostly from the United States and they are going on a seven night voyage from Nassau and a week later they will return and we’ll have another ship of cruise passengers departing from Nassau. So we are super excited.

“Once those guests actually fly into The Bahamas, mostly from the United States … a lot of folks came in days ago …. so they were booking stays in hotels so you are seeing hundreds of hotel nights that have been booked by cruise passengers which is great for the economy.”

Mr Benford said that Royal Caribbean is doing everything to ensure the safety of its passengers, crew, and the people of The Bahamas.

“We are going to start at reduced capacity,” he explained. “We are going to start at a little bit less than 50 percent. The most important thing is that we return to cruising safely. We’ve worked for many, many months on a set of protocols to make sure that we keep not only our guests safe, but most importantly we want to make sure that we keep the people in The Bahamas safe as we return to cruising. We are also changing the way some things work on board the ship.

“With respect to the cruises that leave out of The Bahamas our policy is that 100 percent of our crew members are vaccinated, 100 percent of the adults are vaccinated and we do have some children who are not old enough to be vaccinated so they have to go through a different testing protocol. So the protocol for the Bahamas based ships is crew and guests will be vaccinated with the exception of children.”

Mr Benford said there are two types of cruises that will come to The Bahamas and both will be beneficial to the people of this country.

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