Swartz, who served as the line’s president for seven years before being promoted to president of Holland America Group in December 2020, reflected on the incident and the ensuing global cruise shutdown at Clia’s Selling Cruise Day on Thursday (4 November).

She said the past 20 months had been “full of enormous growth, challenges and phenomenal team work”. 

“We’ve had to dig deeper than we ever expected we could to drive through this epic storm,” she told the conference, stressing her “enormous gratitude” to UK agents for their support.

Swartz also said she believed the cruise sector had become more collaborative since Covid, saying: “If we’ve learnt anything, it’s that we’re all in this together - our successes are tied together.”

Diamond Princess was the first cruise ship to come under the spotlight at the onset of the Covid crisis as the vessel underwent two weeks of quarantine in Yokohama.

According to the World Health Organization in April 2020, around 700 Covid cases and 13 deaths arose from the outbreak.

Among the passengers caught up during the incident were British couple David and Sally Abel, who released frequent social media updates about their experiences onboard before later being hospitalised with Covid. 

Swartz described how she had since kept in contact with the Abels and had exchanged “quite a few emails” with David.

“In some of my darker days as a leader, I received notes of encouragement from him and his recuperation in hospital lifted my heart and helped me press on,” she said.

Swartz told the conference how she was “looking forward to joining David and Sally for a whisky onboard a Princess cruise” in the future. 

Meanwhile, when asked to assess how the pandemic may change consumer habits and perspectives on travel, Swartz said she believed “consumers have changed forever and cruising will change forever too”.

“Consumers have been reminded of how precious life is and how critical friends and family are and taking time with them. I believe consumers will embrace travel even more passionately than they did in the past.” 

In the short-term, guests are more likely to sail a closer to home but from summer 2022 onwards, Swartz said her brands were seeing “great passion” from guests for fly-cruises to “more exotic locations”.

“I think we’re going to see a return to a wider array of itineraries and options for guests."

Swartz said her lines had used their pause in operations to “significantly elevate the guest experience”, such as adapting the safety muster video to be watch in guests’ cabins, while in the case of Princess, each ship will be Medallion-enabled when the fleet returns to full service.

As a result, she claimed brands were seeing record customer and agent satisfaction scores since resuming sailing.