Gradual Resumption of Costa Fleet | Message from costa Chief commercial Officer | Mario Zanetti

I had the pleasure to be on a town hall. I was on board of the Smeralda, if I'm not mistaken, when she was going to resume her operations from Genoa. And today we are talking when we are approaching a new resumption for our beautiful Costa Smeralda. And this time we want to again keep having a gradual, responsible resumption of our operations, but at the same time we want to come back and come back for good. This we want to be a ramp-up that we bring to the end of the year of having most of our ships back into service. And that's I'm referring also to what Arnold and Michael mentioned in their recent speeches. And wishing our fleet and planning and working for having our fleet back into operations almost entirely by the end of the year, keep in anyway the gradual and responsible approach as a guiding principle for all of us.

And so we restart from Smeralda once again. She will perform short cruises itineraries, three and four days, combinable obviously in seven days out of Civitavecchia, calling the western Italian, western Mediterranean Italian ports. And then the next one is going to be after the 27th of March for us. Smeralda is going to be Luminosa on May 2nd on Easter. Mid-itinerary currently planned on Greece, but still as you might imagine there are still a lot of uncertainties on where we can or we can't go. The situation in terms of itinerary imports is still very fluid, and the teams for port and itinerary teams are working very hard to secure attractive itineraries for our guests. But surely we can work on Italian itineraries, and that's anyway a great opportunity to have our guests discovering more and more the beauty of our country, of our home country Italy, and that is the non-Italian guests discovering more and more ports that sometimes we do not call because we mix with the other country's ports.

Itineraries are only one of the challenges we are facing. Demand generation and demand collection are obviously the focus for us all. One of the things that happened when you stop for so long, even if we had some ships operating both us and our competitors, but still the majority of our ships, of ours and other ships, are not operating. So we need to bring back the relevance and the considerations into consumer's mind for the cruise product. And this is something that the entire commercial team is focusing on. But this is something that is not only a job of the specialist, it's anyone's job. It's anyone's job in performing whatever our task with the clear goal of having our ships back into service. And this is something that will help automatically the demand, will help automatically the collection of the bookings.

Because bringing back to normal our world will support then also the sales activities. And we start from a very solid base. We had some troubles as we all know over the last month because before we had our ships and specifically Smeralda stopped for the holidays to contribute to the control of the pandemic in Italy when we had some cruises that had a very good demand for the holiday periods. And then right after that we had some IT issues that we are all aware. But still, the great basis that we start from is the great commitment, the focus that we all performed during also during this trouble time. And this is again a small but not so small piece of support to the demand and to the company's recovery.

But it's not going to be enough because we need to also work with well clear in mind that we have been already a successful company and we will be even more successful in the future. So it's going to be a key element to think and act to succeed. And we have the support of the corporation, we have the support of the entire Costa Group. So starting from this and leveraging on all the good things that we have always been doing, that we did in the past, we are keep doing and we will do in the future, is for sure going to contribute as a key piece for our future success. And our success, our future will be plenty of successful stories.

We are going to build our future very soon, and our future starts from the ships obviously that are going to be in operation but that also are laid up. And I'm trying to visit all of them in the shortest possible time to bring closeness to our colleagues on board from the entire shoreside team. I've already been visiting some ships, and what I can tell you about this experience is that for as weird as it is to see a ship that is moored, it's also amazing and heartwarming to see our colleagues or more taking care of our ships, waiting for a new resumption of the operations. They are very committed, they are performing an excellent job to keep the ship in the best possible conditions given the circumstances. And this is another key element for our future success. Then we are trying also to visit the institutions that we are part of, because with the ships that are now moored in the ports, the link with the local communities is even stronger. And also they are talking to them, they see us, they perceive us, they want us to be part of their communities. And that's what we are, we are part of the local communities that we visit and that we take care of according to our company's priorities, corporate priorities together with environmental protection, health and safety, and well-being of our colleagues on board, compliance. These are elements that are of great importance also in a post-pandemic world. And I'm very proud that our corporation is focusing on these priorities even under these very difficult circumstances.

But there are also more and more good signs coming, some good further elements coming from the sales after the IT issues have been fixed. Vaccination programs, we have all heard about the great reaction that tourist sector has in UK after the announcement of the progress and the next coming plans of the vaccination campaign from the government. And vaccines are coming also in the rest of Europe, so this will help our future for sure and our demand. We are trying also to help ourselves, and let me invite, and I'm also I'm referring for sure to the Italian colleagues but I think that also from other countries there will be the opportunity to see a little bit about it. I want to invite you to take a look at the Sanremo Song Festival because you might see something about Costa. I don't want to disclose too much, I guess that the first tonight is going to be tomorrow so you can enjoy it directly. You will receive some email. I can for sure tell you I won't be there singing unfortunately. Costa Bender is not going to be there singing, but something good can happen anyway for us. So challenges that we are overcoming, great commitment, great efforts, great basis for future success, and some good signs. So I'm sure that we will get out of this stronger than ever. Thanks to you all, and thanks.