canderson

And I think that's understandable, given that the change in protocols pre/post-COVID has increased the risk of financial loss. I think a lot of folks are now saying, "Hey, look... your prices are way up again. Your protocols put a great deal of our cash at risk. If you want us to spend even more than we were paying pre-COVID, you need to help us mitigate the financial risk". Whether that's reasonable can be argued, but it's certainly understandable. As an example, in the 'old days', the primary risks to missing the start of a cruise were flight delays. Now everyone has to deal with the possibility of being in a foreign country, preparing to board, being asymptomatic, and discovering that they're COVID positive the night before. At least the lines are still compensating passengers for that eventuality. Beyond that issue, however, the lines are making it less and less their problem and more the problem of the passenger. The real issue, of course, are the protocols in place specifically for COVID and whether those protocols continue to serve the objective -- or rather, whether the objective still makes as much sense as it once did. By now, I think it's clear that since the omicron variant came into play, taking a zero-COVID approach is a fool's errand. We've seen many threads here outlining the consequences to passengers. If the lines insist on both high prices and high risk of a bad experience (due to protocols) together, people will object. Given the current threat of omicron, should onboard experience for those testing positive be greatly improved if they're willing to take the risk of cruising knowing that protocols won't be quite so draconian?