BARBADOS’ CRUISE ARRIVALS are seeing a resurgence, with 735 000 cruise visitors expected this year and an anticipated 790 000 next year.
The numbers are to be further augmented with more ships set to homeport in Barbados next year, said Minister of Tourism Richard Sealy, who disclosed that Barbados had benefited from 80 000 passengers homeporting since ships had began to overnight here in 2008.
This figure is expected to double during the 2015/16 cruise season, when the cruise ships Britannia and Mein Schiff 3 are due to make ten calls each, bringing 4 000 and over 3 000 passengers, respectively, every week.
But while buoyed by these numbers, Sealy expressed concern over the “vexing problem” of seasonality of the cruise period which sees 80 per cent of cruise activity occurring during the four- to five-month winter season.
He acknowledged this was a big challenge for tour and taxi operators, who were often faced with big repayment commitments on their vehicles. Hence, he added, attempts were being made to reduce the level of seasonality in tourism by “trying to get greater activity year-round”.
He announced Barbados was collaborating in an initiative with the Southern Caribbean Cruise Alliance to create a year-round cruise industry in this part of the region.
The minister shared the statistics while addressing a Shore Excellence workshop for taxi and tour operators at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre yesterday.
He cited the rising cruise passenger arrivals as an indication that cruise partners continued to place confidence in Barbados. He urged the operators to equip themselves to competently deal with this influx of visitors. (GC)
