At 08:30 this morning P&O Cruises new UK “Ultimate Escape” holidays went on sale. For all Carnival UK colleagues this is a moment to be celebrated as these new cruises are the first phase of our Return to Service plan and mark the official start of our cruising countdown!
Carnival UK’s first ship, Britannia, returns to service in…
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As we celebrate the start of our cruising countdown, we’re also taking a moment to reflect on just how much we’ve overcome in the last 12 months. As Simon mentioned in his colleague email,
When we welcomed in 2020 we did so with some ambitious targets for what was to be a very exciting year for Carnival UK: New ships on the horizon, a big sustainability agenda and of course, our recently relaunched Values. As we all know, this was all quickly overshadowed by the growing news of a virus spreading in the Far East – what started as an unexpected shift in itineraries for QM2 and Arcadia, reshaped the future of cruising forever.”
How it all started…
The first impacts were felt back in January 2020 where we had to drastically change our Arcadia and Queen Mary 2 itineraries, moving our ships away from the Far East region. As Covid-19 took hold and communities around the world began imposing travel restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus, we quickly realised adjusting itineraries wasn’t the solution. In March 2020 that we had to make the difficult, but absolutely necessary decision to stop cruising and bring our ships back home to Southampton.
Overcoming repatriation challenges
Thanks to the incredible efforts of our ships’ company and shoreside colleagues working tirelessly together, we reunited nearly 21,000 Guests with their loved ones by the end of March. Our next monumental task was getting 7,500 of our 8,500 fleet colleagues back home safely.
This involved months of hard work, grit and determination to navigate logistical and political challenges and several false starts as boarders continuously opened and closed around the globe
We contacted 90 embassies, organised 50 government repatriation fights and chartered 18 planes to India and the Philippines to get our largest populations home, while making contingency plans to sail colleagues to India on one of our ships. Our Partners in CSSI successfully repatriated 13,000 Indian seafarers across all brands.
Whilst the majority of our people were back home by early summer, from start to finish it took 295 days for our last fleet colleague – a revenue partner from Venezuela – to be reunited with their family on 20 November.
Supporting shoreside colleagues
Back in Southampton, while we were juggling the repatriation of our Guests and fleet colleagues, we had the added business impact of the operational pause and cruise cancellations. which saw our contact centre colleagues inundated for weeks on end as systems struggled to deal with Guest demand. We had to quickly develop a technology solution to help deal with the sheer volume of refunds and transfers.
Then, as Covid-19 took hold in the UK, we entered our first national lockdown which meant the closure of Carnival House on 25 March. With us all working from home overnight, we had to transform as a business, as well as personally adapt, to accommodate complete remote working. The transition to digital working via Zoom, Box, juggling children and home-schooling, conducting DSE assessments for home working was quite remarkable.
Sustaining and protecting our business
Across the Corporation we were tasked with reducing spend and preserving funds to sustain and protect our business for the future. There were huge personal sacrifices, with changes to our hours and contracts across ship and shore, as well as the horrendous task of rightsizing the business for the current situation which meant parting ways with many talented colleagues. Our much loved ship Oceana also saw an early retirement from the fleet, along with 17 other ships across Carnival Corporation &plc.
Without all the sacrifice and effort from each and every one of us, we simply wouldn’t be where we are today – celebrating the start of our cruising countdown and looking forward to our official return to service on 27 June 2021.
Scroll through the timeline below to look back at everything we’ve achieved and overcome in the past 12 months. Click to the right to catch up to today…
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We’ll be bringing you more information about Cunard’s luxury staycations very soon. In the meantime, watch the latest teaser trailer here.
As the cruising countdown continues, we’ll be sharing weekly updates on our Return to Service plan; marking milestones and celebrating the achievements and hard work of our fleet and shoreside colleagues. Look out for more on The Insider.