MUSCAT, MARch 14 - Muscat’s Port Sultan Qaboos came to the aid of the Azamara Quest, a luxury cruise ship, which found itself potentially in limbo at sea when Dubai, its final port of call, announced a ban on all cruise ships as a precaution against the rapidly spreading novel coronavirus responsible for the Covid-19 outbreak. A total of 670 international tourists on board the boutique cruise liner were able to disembark when the vessel docked at Muscat on Friday, an unscheduled call, considering that no Omani port featured on the liner’s current voyage. It is understood that the passengers were checked into local hotels pending their booking on international flights to the respective home countries.
A representative of Towell Barwil & Co LLC, the local shipping agents for Azamara Cruises, confirmed the smooth handling of the call at Muscat.
The port’s readiness to allow the berthing of the ship is understood to have been welcomed by the passengers who had sailed from Cape Town on a 26-night cruise to Dubai. “Hoping to get home tomorrow. This has been an odyssey,” tweeted a passenger just before disembarking on Friday. @AzamaraQuest officers and crew have been magnificent in handling this unprecedented situation’’. En route, scheduled stopovers at Cochin and Mumbai on India’s west coast were cancelled as authorities in India rolled out measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 infections. The 180-metre-long vessel had previously stopped over in Sri Lanka.
Last week, sections of the media in the United Arab Emirates announced that the local Federal Transport Authority had decided to suspend all cruise operations at the country’s port, citing precautions against the pandemic. Consequently, a new voyage planned by the Azamara Quest, starting from Dubai on March 17, has also since been abandoned. The luxury vessel was scheduled to sail around the Arabian Gulf on an 11-night round-trip with stopovers planned at Abu Dhabi, Sir Bani Yas, Doha, Bahrain and Muscat.
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