Cruise & Ferry Review - Spring/Summer 2021

5 8 Achieving onboard excellence Jon Ingleton discusses the benefits of expedition cruise operators outsourcing crewing, food and hotel management with CMI Leisure’s Dietmar Wertanzl C MI Leisure, which provides hotel management services to cruise operators, faced a common industry challenge at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. “Getting passengers and crew home and repositioning our ships to the Canary Islands and France was a significant undertaking when the virus hit,” says Dietmar Wertanzl, the company’s president and CEO. “At the time, no one was predicting that the world would be shut down for so long, therefore we were continuously readying ourselves for a return that never came.” This uncertainty prompted CMI Leisure to take difficult steps to protect its business and the livelihoods of its employees. “Cash is king now and, like everyone else, we’ve had to scale down operations to make sure we survive,” says Wertanzl. “We’re also very conscious of the financial hardships that our crews are facing and we’re proud that our shipowners have stepped up and created an interest-free crew loan programme which has already helped hundreds of seafarers look after their families during this crisis.” Now, the cruise industry is reliant on an effective global vaccination effort to prompt the restart of operations. “While the vaccine roll-out might be progressing well in many source market countries, we need it to be similarly successful in the countries that we visit and the countries that provide our crew,” explains Wertanzl. “We also need some assurances that all of the vaccinations being used will be accepted around the world. If, for example, crew members are given a vaccine that hasn’t been approved by the World Health Organization, will that ship be blocked from making international port calls?” Restarting operations will be a lengthy process and it requires extensive planning. “Right now, we’re gearing up for a summer restart and that’s already a challenge,” says Wertanzl. “Planning the itinerary, crewing, stores and preparing the fleet is a complex series of tasks and, at the same time, you have to sell the cruise to guests. If it transpires that a summer restart isn’t possible then we may have to think about going into hibernation again. “It’s easy to be a sunny weather captain. When storms hit us in the past we have sailed on to calmer waters, but there’s no respite from this storm anywhere in the world. Restarting operations is going to rely on the recovery of so many different nations – for our crew, passengers and ports of call.” The continually changing travel restrictions and the lockdowns in cruise destinations around the world are making it particularly difficult for CMI Leisure to plan ahead. The news that Canada will “ Excellence is achieved by people, and recruiting and training great people is our core strength” INTERV IEW CMI Leisure provides hotel management services to several ships in the Albatros Expeditions fleet, including Ocean Victory