Impact of the COVID Pandemic on the Icelandic Cruise Ports

Maritime sectors have always been dealing with uncertainties and disruptions. The COVID pandemic confronted the cruise industry with severe and wide-ranging challenges on port infrastructure, operation, and services. Understanding the port performance before, during, and aftermath of the disruption helps stakeholders to increase the preparedness and resilience of the port. Therefore, in this study, the impacts of the COVID pandemic on Icelandic ports are explored using secondary and primary data analysis.The results show that small ports are more affected by the pandemic. These ports require more operational and infrastructural preparedness to service cruise ships in the post-COVID era. However, the impact of the pandemic was less evident on the larger ports indicating that large ports face fewer challenges for servicing cruise ships under the pandemic.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Rivers, Ports, Waterways and Dredging Engineerin