Johanna Jainchill
As bad as 2020 was for, well, everyone, for Virgin Voyages, it was particularly disappointing.
Just as the new brand's first ship was supposed to be shown off to thousands of travel advisors and members of the press in March, Covid-19 reached pandemic status and the cruise industry shut down.
Like several ships built and delivered this year, the Scarlet Lady has yet to carry any passengers. Virgin sent the ship back to Italy, where it was built, and where it is moored outside of the port of Civitavecchia. Virgin last month suspended all sailings on the Scarlet Lady through May 8 and moved back the launch of its second ship, the Valiant Lady, from May until Nov. 14.
Tom McAlpin, CEO of Virgin Voyages, is nonetheless enthusiastic about 2021 and bullish about cruising.
"When we start showcasing the ship people will get really excited again," he said. "It's a beautiful ship, and the experience is really different and unique and very much adult focused. We need to beat our drums."
McAlpin is confident that the Scarlet Lady will sail as planned, on a May 9 itinerary to Mexico and Virgin's private destination in Bimini, the Bahamas. McAlpin said the line chose this date because it "was realistic." He didn't want to keep rolling it back month by month, which he said wasn't "doing our sailors or our crew any good" ("sailors" is Virgin-speak for "passengers," it also calls travel advisors "first mates").
"We wanted to pick something that we could feel confident that we can hit," he said. "That, combined with the new announcements on vaccines and that fact that they're actually out there gives me renewed confidence in those dates."
He explained that the Valiant's debut was pushed back as far as it was for several reasons. One is that the shipyard building the vessel, Fincantieri's Marghera yard, closed earlier this year because of the pandemic and is impacted again by Italy's recent shutdown. Beyond that, the Valiant was supposed to launch when the Scarlet Lady already had more than a year of sailings under its belt.
"Launching two ships within months of each other just doesn't work from an operations perspective and a market perspective," McAlpin said. "We always thought we'd have 15 months between ships. We want to be sure we have enough time to launch properly at the right time."
McAlpin believes the vaccine "is a game changer ... that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that we have a solution that works, and it's just a matter of time now. I'm anxious for the vaccines to get distributed as quickly as possible so we can get back to cruising and living life the way we all want to."
McAlpin is also excited about the cruise terminal being built at PortMiami for Virgin Voyages, which he toured earlier this month. He said it has "the best location" at the port: Its proximity to downtown Miami gives cruisers a city view and Miami residents a view of the ship.
Looking ahead, McAlpin said he hopes Biden will reopen Cuba, which had featured heavily on Virgin's initial itineraries before the Trump administration banned cruising to the island.
"Cuba is a place that people want to go see," he said. "I'm sure our president has a lot of other priorities right now, with the pandemic and opening businesses, but I'm hopeful that this rises high on his priority list. It would be great for the industry and great for the Cuban people. They really benefited from tourism, and that all shut down."
As far as McAlpin is concerned, 2020 "was a bad year, and we want to put 2020 behind us, but we're incredibly optimistic about the future. We believe in the industry, and the market for this ship is very strong. We need to get it out there people can see how fun it is and how different it is."