While demand has proven strong for cruises in this season, not all ships are able to operate at full capacity because of crew shortages leaving some lines with not enough staff to open all the restaurants or serve all the cabins.
Christine Duffy, president of Carnival whose lines have felt the impact, blames the problem on long processing lags for crew visas and also on losing crew to other industries during the long cruise shutdown. “I think the labor impact that the industry has seen has been … harder than any other industry… You can’t operate fully unless you have enough staff. People are being creative about it, but we’re not over the hump yet to say ‘What is this really going to look like, and how do we get back?’”
Carnival has reduced capacity on some cruises and has shutdown, for now, specialty restaurants such as Cucina del Capitano and Chef’s Table (above) on its ships. Norwegian, which operates Pride of America in Hawaii, the only ship required to have an all-U.S. crew, has had to cap capacity at about half.
