Seven departures between 12 April and 23 June were axed due to what P&O described as the “current and extraordinary impact” of Covid-19 upon the hospitality and travel sector.

Announcing the cancellations last week, the line said the “temporary disruption” had made crew unavailable to join its ships, meaning staff from Arcadia had to be redeployed to work on other vessels.

Speaking to TTG on Wednesday (13 April), P&O Cruises president Paul Ludlow said he believed the problem would not stretch beyond the end of June.

“The good thing about our staff sourcing model is we can see quite a long way into the future and the pipeline of staff coming. I think this will just be a short-term issue,” he said.

“We can certainly see, and we predict, that come the end of June I think much of the problems would have resolved themselves and we’ll be back to the same regular levels of supply that we’ve seen. So it’s a short-term blip, not a long-term problem.”

Ludlow said the latest wave of Covid cases in the UK had “hit the country hard” and that there “hadn’t been a sector in travel, our outside of travel, that hasn’t felt some type of impact”.

“Unfortunately it’s hit us too but we can be reassured that it’s a short-lived thing,” he said, adding how he did not believe the issue wouldn’t impact the cruise sector “in the medium to long-term”.

“I think companies are really making a compelling proposition to recruit staff and there are lots of people who want to come and work on cruise ships,” he said.