The Majestic Princess will arrive in the port of San Francisco on Monday, the first cruise ship to dock in the Bay Area since March 2020, when the Grand Princess captured global attention and made the reality of the coronavirus palpable to millions of people in the United States. . With infected people on the cruise ship, thousands of passengers were quarantined on board off the California coast.
The port of San Francisco, which has only one cruise terminal in the Bay Area, expects 21 cruise ships to arrive in the remainder of the year.
“Tourism is a crucial part of our city’s economy, helping to pay for important services that allow us to serve our most vulnerable residents,” stated the mayor. “This announcement is just another example that our city is coming back to life and emerging from the pandemic stronger than ever.”
The cruise terminals are located near some of the most famous places in the city, such as the Fisherman’s Wharf neighborhood, Pier 39, and the Ferry Building. When the largest cruise ships dock, there may be more than 6,000 passengers, crew, and terminal employees disembarking, dining, and shopping in the area, according to Breed’s office.
After leaving Los Angeles, the Majestic Princess will make a weeklong cruise along the California coast that will include a night stop in San Francisco.
Passengers must show that they were vaccinated at least 14 days before boarding the cruise and present proof of this. They will also have to test negative for COVID-19 in a diagnostic test that will be performed two days before embarking, Princess Cruises, a Carnival Corp. subsidiary that operates the ship, said in a statement.
In other parts of the United States, cruise ships resumed their voyages in June after a long hiatus in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) repeatedly extended no-sail orders to the intensity of the pandemic. Carnival, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean, the three largest cruise companies, together with lost $ 20 billion last year and another $ 4.5 billion in the first quarter of 2021, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. its acronym in English).
In its most recent guidelines for cruise travel, the CDC recommends that passengers show a recent negative COVID-19 diagnostic test and a document certifying that they are vaccinated. They also recommend that people who are at high risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19 avoid traveling by cruise.
