In order to relieve customers of a possible booking in Corona times, the Heiligenhafen-based company gives a customer guarantee for its Mediterranean locations on Mallorcund in Croatia: For all bookings made from 4th March to 30th April they offer free cancellation or rebooking options. A money-back guarantee applies up to 45 days after booking.
Generally valid for the day of arrival: If the charter does not take place at the time of the cruise due to quarantine at home, border closings, flight cancellations or official travel warnings from the authorities to the charter area, the charter sum can be redeemed at a later point in the 2020 season at one of the company's locations in the Mediterranean; if there are no free capacities, it can also be postponed to 2021. Individual solutions are found for customers who have booked before the 45-day appointment. This does not apply to the Baltic Sea locations of 1st class yachts, as the situation in Germany is currently not classified as so dramatic.
"Should the situation worsen, we will definitely find solutions," said Marketing Director Dirk Kaddach. "In our 48-year company history, we have already mastered a number of crises, such as the Yugoslav war, floods or the Sars bird flu, and we will also be able to deal with the current situation!"
In the meantime, the travel market is showing the first turmoil as a result of cancellations, but mainly for Italy and for flight bookings from overseas. As the institute, which specializes in travel data, Forward Keys reports, bookings to Italy have plummeted since the rise in the number of cases in Lombardy and the first deaths; significantly more trips are canceled than new ones are added. In this respect, the strict reaction of the Italian authorities, who are trying to contain the outbreak with quarantines across entire locations, is quite understandable.
Decline in flight bookings to Italy
In Germany, however, more and more experts are warning to take the outbreak more calmly. According to virologists, the mortality rate for people infected with corona is around 2 percent. For comparison: when the Sars virus broke out a few years ago, the mortality rate was 10 to 11 percent.
Chinese researchers are already differentiating more precisely that they have registered many more deaths (over 80,000, in Germany there are just 349 confirmed cases). For young people, the risk is therefore rather low (0.2 percent). From the age of 50, the risk of dying from the infection increases significantly - to around 1.3 percent. Most at risk are people aged 80 and over - 14.8 percent of those infected in the Chinese analysis died. It is questionable whether these figures can be transferred to Europ, because it can be assumed that a large number of sick people are not recorded, the symptoms are weak and they do not go to the doctor.
At the moment, the curve is already flattening with the number of infected people in Asia, which gives the researchers hope. The Robert Koch Institute currently assesses the risk to the health of the German population as "moderate".