Tourists´ Risk Perception Towards Cruising: COVID-19 Impact on Travel Intentions

This dissertation comes in a period of uncertainty for tourism and consequently for cruises, a period that requires enlightening and quick answers on the way forward, thus based on the theme of Cruise Tourism and the COVID-19 pandemic. The Cruise Tourism sector is possibly the most well-known sector with the fastest development in the Tourism industry. An example of this is the contribution of this sector to the global economy, and in 2019 it generated US$154.5 billion. In turn, cruise tourism in Europe generated US$64.5 billion, or 42% of the total contribution of global production (CLIA, 2020b). This sector produces significant social effects and capital volumes and creates various jobs. Thus, subthemes were studied within the great theme of Cruise Tourism, such as the industry's evolution to this day. The author intended to make a round-up on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on everyday life, the tourism industry, and the cruise sector to better understand the pandemic’s consequences in this market. A conceptual model was developed to summarize the literature review regarding risk perception and travel intentions (together with other constructs that support them). Based on that model and the extensive literature review, hypotheses were made to guide this thesis’ empirical analysis better. Through questionnaires, this dissertation met the opinion of tourists concerning the practice of post-pandemic cruises to conclude whether these remain an attractive tourist product or are considered a danger. The sample is composed of 536 answers from all over the world. Generation and Cruise Experience were used as independent constructs to analyse whether tourists’ responses were different regarding their age or whether they were repeaters or firsttimers. Then, by interconnecting these themes, it was possible to understand how this pandemic has changed (or not) tourists' risk perception and how this affected their future intentions to take a cruise. It can be concluded that the obtained results go in accordance with the literature, and responses do change with the independent constructs. Tourists do not seem afraid of contracting the disease, but they certainly recognize that there is much buzz around the pandemic. When looking at Cruise Tourism, most tourists do not recognize cruise ships as too crowded but are somewhat reluctant about taking a cruise in the future and how COVID will affect their trips. Plus, tourists recognize the benefits and consequent value of taking a cruise and still trust cruise companies and staff to overcome adversities. Overall, results show that tourists do have intentions of going on a cruise in the future but are not so sure about when that future is going to be.