It’s a bit too soon to say how the Omicron variant may impact the 2022 cruise ship season.
Port Saint John President and CEO Craig Estabrooks said they are still working very closely with Transport Canada, the provincial government and municipalities on what a cruise restart would look like.
“Our senior folks on the cruise team, Andrew Dixon and Natalie Allabym are just in daily contact with the tourism association right through to senior people at Transport Canada,” Estabrooks said.
Estabrooks says he’s very hopeful things will improve by next summer.
“While we do have a couple of cruise ships scheduled in the spring and a little bit summer, the vast majority of our cruise ship season is in those fall months,” Estabrooks said.
Estabrooks said safety is their biggest concern when it comes to the new cruise ship season.
“We’re just very focused on when cruise does resume, whenever that would be, to do it in the safest manner possible to make sure that our community is as comfortable we can get them and we can get tourism resumed in the City of Saint John in the near future,” Estabrooks said.
Cruise ships were permitted back into Canada as of November 1st.
