The world's "Big Three" cruise majors could take the rare step of putting ships into lay-up as they weather the coronavirus storm.

UBS analyst Robin Farley that it was rare for Carnival Corp, Norwegian Cruise Line or Royal Caribbean to take ships off the water to deal with short-term shocks, but the Covid-19 coronavirus might be different.

"We would not be surprised to see some lines choose to lay up perhaps 10-20% of some fleets this year to give time for demand to recover over the longer term," Farley wrote.