Celestyal Cruises has postponed its autumn and winter sailings and will resume operation in March 2022.

The line – which is on track to complete its current summer sailings on Celestyal Olympia and Celestyal Crystal at the end of August – said the decision had made been due to “current travel restrictions in place and the continuing evolution of additional restrictions coming into play”.

It added in a statement: “Travellers have been less willing to take the necessary steps to travel this autumn and winter, especially for trips of shorter duration, and have indicated a clear preference to defer their cruises until 2022.”

Celestyal Cruises CEO Chris Theophilides said: “I am extremely proud of our employees, crew, our business partners and the communities we serve for coming together during this successful summer season to provide a highly enjoyable experience for our guests while implementing our enhanced health protocols.

“We are confident our decision to postpone the autumn and winter itineraries is the right one. Celestyal continues to draw a large portion of our guests from a number of global source markets that each have their specific preferred travel period, and it became apparent to us that these core markets have become less interested in being inconvenienced by the current and ongoing travel restrictions in place, particularly for shorter duration trips in the autumn and winter.

“At the start of the pandemic in 2020, we were one of the first cruise lines to pause our operation in reaction to the operating realities, and this is what we are also doing at this juncture.

“In the coming months, we look forward to announcing new experiences to be enjoyed by guests in 2022 and beyond. We will also be launching a new reservations system for our travel advisor partners this autumn with enhanced self-service functionality.

“We are already seeing strong booking demand for next year as we set to begin our 2022 operating season in March and are very much looking forward to welcoming our guests back on board and continue delivering the unique Celestyal destination-focused experience in what looks to be an even more normalised environment.”

All guests impacted by the postponement of sailings from September through to December will have the option of receiving full refunds or applying their deposits to 2022 or 2023 sailings, with a 20 per cent bonus value to be applied to their future sailing.