Scenic Eclipse II , confidence in the cruise industry and the luxury travel market — MercoPress mercopress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mercopress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Keel laid for Scenic Eclipse II seatrade-cruise.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from seatrade-cruise.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The passengers have journeyed a long way to get here, including a likely tumultuous 36-hour trip through the 500-mile-wide Drake Passage, regarded as one of the world s roughest bodies of water. Some board Zodiac rafts for the short ride to shore, where, from a distance, they will observe and photograph nesting penguins. Others will set off in kayaks; if they re lucky, a curious fin whale or orca might pop up to check them out. Still others will snorkel, dive, snowshoe, or even take a submarine or helicopter ride. They will have the landing spot to themselves for a few hours, and thanks to a scheduling and communication system among all vessels in the area, they probably won t see another ship - though the penguins will see a stream of parka-clad intruders all day long.
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Global cruise operator Scenic has axed all six of its June-August sailings in Western Australiaâs Kimberley region, with other foreign lines also cancelling similar planned local departures as the industry comes to grips with a prolonged hard border.
Delivering the Federal Budget on Tuesday night, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg confirmed inbound and outbound international travel would remain low through to mid-2022. From that point, a âgradual recovery in international tourism is assumed to occur,â the Budget papers say.
The Australian cruise industry, worth just shy of $5 billion a year to GDP, has been in talks with federal, state and territory governments for months, hoping for the green light to sail a handful of pre-quarantined ships with vaccinated crew into Australian waters for small-scale, Australians-only bubble cruises, for which they have sold hundreds of berths.