Why Hantavirus might not dent the booming expedition-cruise business

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The polar regions fascinated Daniel Liss ever since he was a child.He would study maps and globes, picturing the people and animals who call the coldest reaches of the Earth home. As an adult, he crisscrossed the Alaskan frontier, lived in Sweden, and visited the Norwegian island town of Longyearbyen, one of the world’s northernmost settlements.In December, he crossed a big item off his bucket list, sailing on an Antarctic cruise with Oceanwide Expeditions.

The experience was life-changing, he said.“It was easily the best investment I’ve ever made,” he said. “I’ve seen unbelievably stunning, beautiful, moving, life-changing places, but Antarctica was on a different level.”Oceanwide has courted expedition-seeking passengers like Liss and gained renown for serving a small, yet fast-growing, part of the cruise-line industry.

By 2029, the global capacity for expedition cruises is expected to more than double from the decade prior, according to the Cruise Lines International Association.But Oceanwide is grappling with the fallout from a deadly hantavirus outbreak on a recent voyage that included stops to remote islands in the South Atlantic Ocean.Oceanwide has said that it isn’t expecting to cancel future sailings in connection with hantavirus. The MV Hondius, the ship where the outbreak occurred, will undergo cleaning and disinfecting after it arrives in the Netherlands Monday, the company said.

The ship’s crew and medical staff will undergo quarantine.Oceanwide didn’t respond to requests for comment.What the outbreak will mean for Oceanwide and the expedition industry’s future remains to be seen. Other expedition-cruise operators said they haven’t experienced any slowdown in bookings as a