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The Argosy Harbor Cruise departs Friday for the first time in over a year from Pier 55 on the Seattle coast.
SEATTLE – After a year of mooring due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Seattle’s Argosy Cruises will set sail again from Memorial Day weekend.
The Argosy Harbor Cruise departs Friday for the first time in over a year from Pier 55 on the Seattle coast.
Argosy works with COVID-19 restrictions, such as a mask mandate and with a capacity of 50%.
Like most other companies in the tourism, sightseeing and entertainment industries, government mandates meant no groups of people, so no cruises for Argosy. The company had to lay off employees and move on to other areas while waiting for the right time to re-book its popular one- or two-hour sightseeing cruises for which it is known.
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“We had, you know, a number of PPP loans to draw on and we got really creative and started a brand new business,” said Elin Windus, director of sales and marketing for Argosy Cruises. “We actually created an e-commerce platform. So we sold t-shirts and water bottles and merchandise to get as much sales as possible, we sold gift cards, we did everything we could to make some money during this period of closure. “
The company picked Memorial Day weekend to reopen, hired more staff, and put a lot of thought and planning into preparing the boats.
“We had included a number of metrics in the opening date that we had to meet in order for the reopening to make sense for us,” explained Windus. “So we really have a chance for us, we have to hire a lot of staff to be on all of our ships. We have to hire a lot of staff to sell tickets. We made the decision; it was probably about six weeks ago. Things are moving in the right direction, vaccination rates are rising, the number of cases is falling. If that weren’t the case, we would have pushed ahead with the reopening. “
The first cruise will set sail at 10:45 a.m. on Friday.
Argosy begins with the harbor tour before the lock cruise is brought back in mid-June.
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