Sydney mother of three Jodie Paulin has $20,000 worth of cruise holidays planned for her family when the local industry restarts after a two-year pandemic shutdown.
Cruise ships are set to return to Australia from Sunday, after being banned from entering Australian waters in March 2020 to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
International cruise ships will be allowed back in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.
The three states have announced COVID protocols, including full vaccination and testing for passengers, and a mask mandate for customers and crew when boarding and leaving the ship.
Western Australia and Northern Territory are allowing smaller ships to visit their ports, and Tasmania and South Australia have yet to announce their plans.
The Pacific Explorer, owned by cruise giant Carnival Corporation, will be the first international ship to sail into Sydney Harbour when the ban is lifted on April 17.
Ms Paulin is getting ready to sail on the ship when it departs for its first voyage, a return trip from Sydney to Brisbane at the end of May.
Ms Paulin works two jobs so she can take her family on cruises, and she has been eagerly waiting for the travel ban to end.
"I go down to Circular Quay and I look at where the cruise ships are normally parked, and it's really sad," Ms Paulin told the ABC.
Ms Paulin is not put off by COVID-19 outbreaks on cruise ships, including on Carnival Cruise's Ruby Princess in March 2020, which left nearly 30 people dead and more than 600 people infected.
"I'm worried about getting COVID at my local supermarket," she said.
Cruise industry shutdown
The pandemic shut down the global tourism industry, including cruise operations, an industry worth more than $154 billion, in 2019.
Half a million jobs were lost in the industry from March to September 2020, because of coronavirus lockdowns and restrictions, with a $77 billion hit to the global economy, according to industry body Cruise Lines International Association.
CLIA Australasia said Australia's cruise ban caused a $10 billion economic hit locally and affected more than 18,000 direct and indirect jobs.
Before the pandemic, spending by cruise ship passengers in Australia was worth $1.4 billion annually, and Australia was one of the world's top cruise markets, with up to 1.3 million people taking a cruise each year.
CLIA managing director Joel Katz thinks the cruise ban should have been lifted earlier, as it was in other markets, such as Europe, the United States and parts of Asia and the Pacific.
Travel industry hit
Travel agent Belle Goldie had to close her travel agency and take a retail job when the pandemic struck and business dried up in 2020.
"I had a commercial property with staff a couple of days a week. Overnight, I realised that this was serious, a serious financial thing for me as well, because I put all of my family's money into my new business," Ms Goldie said.
"And I worked on more than 1,200 client bookings on my own around the clock."
Ms Goldie has reopened her travel agency in Western Sydney, and she said there had been a surge in demand for cruise bookings.
"They are booking for last minute, kind of May, June, July.
"They're booking, you know, quite soon to travel, whereas cruising typically in the past has been an up to an eight-month lead time, people are booking multiple cruises now."
Ms Goldie is also taking the Pacific Explorer Sydney-to-Brisbane return trip.
And she is ecstatic that cruises are back after two long years.
"It's very emotional for me because I love to cruise, and I know how much Australians love to cruise. And we know the crew, they become like family to us."
Arts industry boost
The hard-hit arts and entertainment industry has also welcomed the return of cruises to Australia with many performers employed by major cruise companies.
Dancer Amber-Jade Smith has just won the contract of a lifetime with cruise giant Royal Caribbean as Australia opens its doors.
The 18-year-old performer is one of 9,356 people employed full-time here by cruise ships.
Royal Caribbean will set sail from Australia in late October.
Ms Smith said because she was fully vaccinated she felt less concerned about catching COVID-19.
She said the chance to work on a cruise ship as a performer would help young people get a start in the arts industry.
"We've been waiting for this for ages, especially young dancers like me," she said.
"We've been holding back from things like this because we haven't had the opportunity."
COVID-safe cruises
Overseas, cruises have been operating since mid-2020 with new COVID safety measures, including requirements for passengers to be fully vaccinated and wear masks on board if they can't socially distance.
More than 80 countries have resumed cruising, with Australia one of the last major markets to set sail.
Mr Katz said the industry took safety seriously.
However, the measures have not stopped outbreaks on ships, including a recent outbreak on the Ruby Princess, which is now sailing in the US.
Cruise challenges
Major cruise lines like Carnival Corporation and Royal Caribbean are seeing record bookings.
However, they have also forecast more losses this year because of higher fuel prices from the war in Ukraine, and the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Professor Tim Harcourt, chief economist at the University of Technology Sydney, said there were a lot of challenges facing the industry, including an ageing clientele.
"I'd say COVID and the wash-up, the environment, climate change, and the future demographics of the industry," he said.
"A cruise ship is not like an airplane....you can run flights below capacity and still make money.
"And once you get people on the boat, you've got a captive audience and they make a lot of money, of course — across-the-counter gambling, drinking, entertaining and so on."
He said the threat from the coronavirus was not over yet, although the cruise industry was trying to take as many precautions as they could.
"You can get it anywhere, sure, but it's a concentrated group of people," he said.
"It's hard to do the tyranny of social distance if you like, so it's going to spread pretty quickly."
'Floating incubators'
And not everyone is celebrating the return of international cruise ships to Australia.
The ABC spoke to Evie Apfelbaum and Ruth Poger, who were visiting the observation deck of the currently closed Overseas Passenger Terminal in Sydney, where cruise ships arrived and departed.
Ms Poger said she had no desire to go on a cruise ship because she was frightened of contracting the virus.
"That at the moment would be the number one reason why I wouldn't go on a cruise ship," she said
"I would say floating incubators, that's exactly how I would see them at the moment."
