“And the greatest commitment during the pandemic award goes to….Intercruises!” 

MedCruise, the Association of Mediterranean Cruise Ports, has bestowed upon Intercruises a very unique accolade: ‘MedCruise associate member showing the greatest commitment during the pandemic’. Intercruises was selected as the winner from MedCruise’s 34 Associate Members by a jury of international cruise industry experts, including cruise line executives and travel journalists.

Ramon Hurtado, Global Product & Operations Manager, accepted the accolade on behalf of Intercruises during the virtual awards ceremony: “Our efforts have been to support the cruise lines, ports and destinations, and we never expected to win an award for this. I would like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to all the Intercruises teams that have worked tirelessly over the last few months, not just in the Mediterranean, but around the world.” You can view a video Ramon’s full acceptance speech below.

What did Intercruises do to win the award? 

While this award is related to Mediterranean activities, Intercruises teams first worked with cruise lines, ports and destinations on challenges brought about by the pandemic in Asia, in January. As the virus spread and the impact grew, so did Intercruises’ commitment and support. A good summary was provided by Olga Piqueras, Intercruises Managing Director, in a recent interview with Cruises News Magazine: “Our teams around the world worked around the clock; cancelling existing arrangements, working with cruise lines and ports to plan alternative itineraries, making new arrangements and supporting repatriation efforts. There are countless examples of where our teams went above and beyond to support cruise lines and their guests in different destinations – Singapore, Mumbai, Palma, Barcelona, Marseille, Southampton, Lisbon, Fort Lauderdale, San Diego and many more.”

Cruises stop, but support continues

Even when most cruises had stopped, the Intercruises team continued to provide port operations support, organizing provisions, crew repatriation and ship lay-up. At the same time, working in collaboration with the TUI Group Health & Safety Team, Intercruises created a ‘Resumption Readiness’ document, which was shared with cruise lines, ports and destination partners, and included:

  • Guidelines and recommendations for resuming ground operations, including transportation, guest embark/disembark and shorex
  • Product development focus areas, as featured in a Seatrade Talks session 

At time of writing, Intercruises is still providing support to almost all cruise lines and in August started to provide ground operations services again.

Thanks for the award MedCruise!

Check out Ramon’s thank you video below.

You may also be interested in: