Costa Cruises will restart its vacations from September with Malta being one of its first ports of call from Genoa.
The announcement comes as Italy introduces rapid COVID-19 testing from select countries at its ports and airports and travel restrictions start tightening with the rise in cases.
Cruise lines had cancelled planned departures due to the closure of ports as a coronavirus containment measure and 135 ships had stopped visiting Valletta’s Grand Harbour between mid-March and mid-July.
Costa Cruises had progressively suspended its trips worldwide due to the pandemic until August 15, cancelling all cruises in Northern Europe for the remainder of the summer season.
But as from September 19, its Diadema will operate between Italy and Malta, the company announced on its website, while another of its ships would start sailing to Greece at the beginning of the month, following the Italian government’s approval of the resumption of cruises and its new health protocol.
The Diadema will carry out seven-day cruises from Genoa to the western Mediterranean, including Malta, the company said, while other cruise liners will not be operational until September 30 to allow for the gradual implementation of new protocols on board and ashore.
Costa Cruises has developed the Costa Safety Protocol for its fleet, with new operating procedures adapted to respond to the COVID-19 situation.
Meanwhile, around 850 French passengers, who were onboard a corona-virus-riddled cruise ship that was turned away from numerous ports in March, have filed a collective suit in Paris with 180 complaints, including manslaughter, against Costa Cruises, their lawyer told AFP on Sunday.
The class action, which includes complaints from the families of three passengers who died of COVID-19, accuses the cruise giant of negligence and faults during their trip on the Costa Magica.
Roughly 200 passengers a week were meant to depart from Grand Harbour on Mediterranean cruises between April and June, but ships belonging to popular lines were absent from the port since the start of what was meant to be the cruising season.
One of the first cruise ships to sail from Malta as ports reopened took its passengers… nowhere.
In a first for the island, these trips do not dock anywhere, but instead, take passengers on a cruise on the open sea.
Travel company TUI Cruises arranged the first ‘cruise to nowhere’ from Malta in the hope that it would boost confidence in the mode of travel that has been badly damaged by the pandemic.
The ripple effects of the halted cruise liner industry have been far-reaching, affecting retailers in Valletta, in particular, whose business relied heavily on the influx of passengers on day trips.
Meanwhile, cruise liner terminals have been included in an update to the laws regulating the mandatory wearing of face masks.
On Saturday, the government issued a legal notice on the “mandatory use of medical or cloth masks”. Such masks must be worn in retail outlets, on public transport and the Gozo ferry, in the Ċirkewwa and Imġarr terminals and the Malta International Airport.
The legal notice has since been updated to also include the terminal buildings “for passengers travelling by catamaran or by cruise liners”.