Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Easing COVID Guidelines

August 25, 2022

Cruise lines around the world continue to ease up on their COVID guidelines, opening the way for unvaccinated passengers to cruise as well.

Here’s what’s new with COVID guidelines on two popular cruise lines for incentive groups:

Royal Caribbean International

Royal Caribbean International announced new protocols in response to the industry’s changes: starting Sept. 5 the cruise line will welcome all guests—unvaccinated and vaccinated—to sail.

The new guidelines are:

Unvaccinated guests can cruise with negative results from any commercially available test, including self-tests.
No testing is required for vaccinated guests sailing on cruises that are nine nights or less.
On sailings of 10-plus nights, guests—vaccinated or unvaccinated—must provide a negative test within three days of their sailing date.

Note: Due to local regulations, sailings to or from Australia, Bermuda, Canada or Singapore still require guests to be vaccinated.

For more information, visit royalcaribbean.com.

Celebrity Cruises

Celebrity Cruises joins other members of the cruise line industry by dropping vaccination requirements and simplifying testing guidelines.

Beginning Sept. 5, 2022, all guests, regardless of vaccination status, departing on most sailings from the U.S. and Europe can now cruise as long as they meet local testing requirements to board. Celebrity Cruises will also now accept any commercially available test, including unsupervised self-tests, in many destinations.

New pre-boarding testing requirements for the U.S. and Europe include:

Fully vaccinated guests no longer need to test to board sailings from the U.S. that are nine nights or less (excluding sailings that visit Canada and Bermuda).
A negative test result from a simple, unsupervised and self-administered test will be accepted for all sailings (excluding sailings that visit Australia, Bermuda, Canada, Greece or New Zealand).

Note: Sailings to and from ports in Canada, Australia and New Zealand still require all guests ages 12 and up to be fully vaccinated to sail in keeping with country requirements. Galapagos cruises require guests ages three and older to be vaccinated.

For more information, visit celebritycruises.com.

This article first appeared in Prevue’s sister publication, Recommend.