Andrea Zelinski
While it is only mid-August, July feels like a year away. The hot days of summer blend together, and my attention is shifting to a new season, of yellow buses whisking kids away to school and grocery stores stocking pumpkin-spiced coffee creamers.
But Anthony Hamawy, president of Cruise.com, has no problem remembering July. He keeps a journal to help him find correlations between recent events and booking volumes.
July was full of big events, he said, and they were not good for business.
"I could have done without July. It was a difficult July," he said.
The month kicked off with a change in how many businesses display pricing. The change was spurred by a California law targeting hidden fees that went into effect July 1, requiring retailers to include all taxes and fees and other costs to reflect the price the consumer will ultimately pay.
Cruise lines, like many other industries, had to adjust their pricing for the California market. Several cruise lines decided to change their pricing across the rest of the country, too. But changes like that never go smoothly, Hamawy said. Several cruise lines experienced technical glitches, although they varied by brands. Nonetheless, the glitches depressed bookings, he said.
"Things like that never go smooth. They just don't," he said. "What made it massive is every cruise line had a change and glitch at the same time."
Then came the Fourth of July holiday. While not unexpected, holidays typically slow down bookings, he said. That makes sense: people are usually busy with their friends and families rather than booking travel on those days
July was also the month Hurricane Beryl plowed through the Caribbean and into Texas, one of Cruise.com's four biggest drive markets, Florida, New York, California and Texas.
Then came the assignation attempt on former president Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. Less than a week later came the CrowdStrike global outage, which wreaked havoc across the country, namely with air travel.
Booking slowed down around both of those events, too, Hamawy said.
July wasn't done. Another tropical storm developed at the end of the month and gained steam to become Hurricane Debby, which made landfall in Florida by early August. That, too, slowed business down in another one of Cruise.com's biggest markets.
Hamawy isn't deterred by that tough month. The market has been healthy for 18 to 24 months, and the cruise industry is strong. Travel advisors in a recent survey said their cruise bookings exceeded their expectations this year.
But he does recommend journaling to get a better sense of how various events affect sales. It's a way to avoid similar issues in the future, he said, or know what to expect when big news breaks.