ST. LUCIA – Saint Lucia is set to record its highest number of cruise arrivals during the 2007/2008 period with some five hundred and fifty- six thousand passengers, the highest since 2001.
At a press conference on Monday August 26th, on “the state of the local cruise sector”, Acting General Manager of the Saint Lucia Air and Sea Ports Authority, SLASPA Sean Matthew explained for the first time ever in the cruise industry Saint Lucia would be maintaining five hundred thousand passengers in two years.
Eleven new vessels are expected to make calls to Saint Lucia over the next three years, among them “Carnival Celebrity,” “ Holland America” and “Royal Caribbean,” totalling 1.7 million passengers. The cruise sector Matthew said presents a huge market growth that Saint Lucia can tap into.
The largest cruise companies referred to as “Big three” which include “Royal Caribbean International,” “Carnival Corporation” and “Star Group” are the main cruise lines operating in the Caribbean. The Saint Lucia Air and Sea Ports Authority meantime has been responding to concerns regarding the redeployment of Carnival Destiny to the Dominican Republic, resulting in a slight decline of about 8%. The vessel made its inaugural call to Saint Lucia last year with a year round weekly visit, constituting close to one hundred and thirty thousand passengers, and is one of 79 vessels belonging to Carnival Corporation. But the SLASPA official has allayed all fears, stating that the arrival of the new vessels would pick up the slack.
“In the industry we always make it an issue if any particular vessel pulls out and goes to a new location. What we try to do is to augment that by getting the best possible scenario from the “Carnival” or its associates in order to bring up the numbers and “Carnival Corporation” has been very, very responsive to sending additional calls to Saint Lucia,” Matthew added.
“In the industry ships will cancel, will relocate because it is a business. The revenues that the “Destiny” gains from going to Dominican Republic through European travellers are far greater than they can get out of a Puerto-Rican destination in terms of a home port,” he added.
There are lots of initiatives to be undertaken in the local cruise sector, one of which is home porting. SLASPA is currently looking at all the facets of tourism generally which include cruise, yachting, and stay over in order to provide an exceptional service that supports all the other sectors.
