Cruise numbers won’t normalise before 2024 year end
Published:Friday | September 15, 2023 | 12:07 AMJanet Silvera/Senior Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
CRUISE TOURISM numbers are lagging behind pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels and are not expected to return to normal until the end of 2024, Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett has confirmed.
That aspect of the industry will end this year 23 per cent below the year 2019, the island’s largest arrival year ever. The country expects to end the year with 1.185 million says Bartlett, who was addressing journalists at a JAPEX 2023 breakfast at the Jewel Grande Resort and Spa on Tuesday morning.
According to the tourism minister, the late return to buoyancy in the sector is a worldwide issue.
“We have a little way to go, and, by the end of 2024 when we get at that point, we would just be about 250,000 away from the five million visitors that I have projected we’ll have in five years, prior to COVID,” he noted.
Gleaner research shows that ships are sailing at full capacity and new ships are being constructed. However, like land-based passengers, cruise shippers are going in the direction of Europe instead of coming to the Caribbean.
Some European countries are turning back cruise ship passengers and are adding a tax to reduce the numbers on day visitors. Iceland is one of the countries that has embarked on this practice, while the city of Venice in Italy has instituted a tax and turned back cruise ships, hoping to reduce the impact on their infrastructure.
In fact, intent to cruise is higher than it was in December 2019, continuing a trend that began in the last quarter of 2020, while 85 per cent of travellers who have cruised committed to cruising again, six per cent higher than pre-pandemic, says Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA).
In 2022, the organisation forecast that global cruise capacity was expected to grow 19 per cent to more than 746,000 lower berths (passenger cabins) from 2022 to 2028.
CLIA also stated that cruise tourism was rebounding faster than international tourism arrivals, and its volume was forecast to reach 106 per cent of 2019 levels in 2023, with some 31.5 million passengers sailing.
Overall, the ships that would have normally called on Jamaican ports have chosen other destinations as their port of call. Countries such as Mexico, The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic have taken away some of Jamaica’s business.
Stakeholders here say cruise lines such as Carnival have dropped 50 per cent their port of call to ports such as Montego Bay for January to December 2024.
“We can’t grow, we can’t increase the business, and, at the same time, we have inflationary expenses. Overall operating cost from skilled labour to electricity to transportation and daily food costs,” said a business operator who requested anonymity.
They shared that they are trying to cut costs in every way possible but are down to the bare bones.