Anger Around Possible Bailouts for Royal Caribbean

One cannot dispute COVID-19 has touched every aspect of our lives and has evoked very strong emotions from the public. While one topic may evoke FEAR or ANGER, the next topic could elicit JOY, SURPRISE or even DISGUST. Consumers have had almost every emotion with the cruise industry since February.

In February, certain cruise ships were quarantined off-shore to reduce the risk of Coronavirus spread. Beginning the week of March 16, one of the dominant emotions around the topic of cruise lines was Joy. Consumers felt Joy around the fact that cruises were grounded for at least 30 days to help stop the spread of COVID-19. This weekend, Cognovi's EVENT IMPACT APP on the Bloomberg Terminal detected a high emotion event from Royal Caribbean. Consumers were highly emotional about a possible bailout for the cruise line industry as mentioned multiple times by the White House and discussed in this published on USA Today, March 18, 2020.

The graph below displays a trend line where Joy was measured over the past week when Joy was tracking higher. However, when the White House mentioned a bailout, Joy began to decrease. After the White House Sunday briefing, Joy around Royal Caribbean quickly turned into Anger when President Trump answered a press question in regard to bailing out the cruise industry. The reason Anger increased is that Royal Caribbean is a foreign entity and does not pay taxes to the United States government.

We will continue to monitor whether a bailout could have unintended long-term consumer ramifications for cruise lines.