Westerdam finds a port in the Coronavirus storm

Holland America’s Westerdam will be docking at Sihanoukville, Cambodia on 13 February at 0700 hours. The ship has been stuck at sea for the past week as port after port has refused its request to dock and disembark passengers out of fear that the ship’s passenger and crew were carriers of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

The Westerdam was on a 14-day voyage which began in Hong Kong on 01 February with 1,455 guests and 802 crew on board. It was scheduled to dock in Yokohama, Japan on 15 February. The disrupted cruise, with no ports of call essentially gave their guests 14 days at sea.

In a press release/update, Holland America advises that passengers will disembark at Sihanoukville, then travel via Holland America arranged charter flight to Phnom Penh for forward travel to their respective homes.

No doubt Carnival Cruise Lines (parent company of Holland America) will be analyzing ongoing cruises via their incident analysis group. For now the 15 February cruise out of Yokohama has been canceled and future cruises are being evaluated.

Refunds to passengers

Holland America continues that Holland America will arrange for, and pay all flights home and that all passengers will received a 100% cruise refund and a 100% future cruise credit voucher.

The cruise line emphasized that “all guests on board are healthy” and that there are NO known cases of 2019-nCoV on board, nor have their been.

Note: The author is a shareholder of Carnival Corporation, parent company of Holland America.

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