Rosie Spinks

Carnival is facing two unprecedented crises: Lost revenue from the complete cessation of its cruising operations and an optics nightmare that puts the future of cruising's popularity in genuine doubt.

Working for an airline while that airline's fleet is grounded is a strange position to be in. In response, Rebecca Lawrence and many of her colleagues are using their furlough period to help the frontline of the coronavirus response.

It's a tough time for tourism marketers but going dark isn't necessarily required. Here are some examples of campaigns that are striking the proper tone.

They say in every crisis there's opportunity. Event tech company OccassionGenius has found an unexpected way for travel companies to leverage its tech during the global shutdown.

Corporate bailouts are never popular with the average voter. But bailing out the cruise industry — which goes out of its way to avoid paying U.S. federal taxes — is proving a particularly hard case to make as the travel industry appeals to Congress for help.

Airlines, cruise ships, and hotels rely on travel advisors to book a lot of their business. A lobbying effort is afoot to make sure that thousands of these small businesses don't get left out of recovery measures.

Tourism marketers can't run their campaigns as usual right now. But that doesn't mean they can't do anything. The challenge lies in finding the right tone — and the right timing.

For the travel industry, coronavirus has upended everything, kind of like how we expected climate change to — just much faster. Recovery, when it comes, will require taking the lessons from this thoroughly global disruption on board.

The cruise industry has had a spectacularly rotten week. Facing criticism from all sides, it looks increasingly unlikely that many lines will still be sailing as scheduled on Monday.

In some ways, this has felt inevitable. The cruise line at the center of the coronavirus crisis is temporarily ceasing operations. The question is whether this decision will be the first domino to fall.