cruise ships
 

This report (at the link) is about Carnival pulling out of Antigua, and Nassau resenting cruise-lines' antics, and the bitter dispute here in Cayman about whether to build a $300 million four-berth dock. Our argument is over the economic sense or non-sense of paying such an enormous sum - borrowed from the lines themselves, who will withhold all the present anchorage fees for the next 25 years. Skullduggery is suspected by many members of our public - skullduggery in the form of bribes. What's going on in the rest of the region?
https://caymannewsservice.com/2019/0...port-concerns/

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You would think! The actual contract is for US$250 million, but of course it will go over budget. It must be the diamond-encrusted gang-planks that put the price so high. The only people who will benefit will be our duty-free shops. Sometimes there are five or six large ships in our harbour, and 10,000 or more passengers wandering all over the roads downtown. Ah yes, I forgot to mention: the ships all unload downtown and that's where the piers will be built too.

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We have the same question in Greenock. Many cruise ships coming in but very little benefit to the town.

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Having been to Greenock, I'm not convinced I'd want to get off the cruise ship either

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Same questions are raised for New Zealand. Dunedin for instance. Cruise ships dock but really there is little to no benefit to the city or the surrounding area unless the cruise ship shore trips take them to a specific spot . I am thinking of my beloved albatross colony in particular with this. Most seem to do these whistle stop tour things with perhaps a short stop thrown in. We don't get them where I live although sometime they do come in. Again , the people on them just pass quickly through really .

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I put my hand up to doing this. If it’s our first time in port we normally book an excursion. Sometimes it may be around the town/local area, or we may go further afield. In the case of Dunedin, we took the Taieri Gorge Railway from Dunedin to Punkerangi. That took most of the day. By the time the train got back to Dunedin station, we were too tired to look around the town and went straight back to the ship. :o

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Nothing wrong with cruising if that is what a person enjoys. Many people love to go on cruises. Our pals do.
From the passenger end of things , why would they spend extra money ashore if they have bought and paid for all inclusive & it is easy to book excursions through the cruise line.

I think the point here is do the ports of call & the surrounding businesses and communities actually really benefit in any way.

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I think local businesses must benefit. Some of the mega ships have around 6K passengers on board, most have approx 3K. Some ports have several cruise ships most days of the week. Not everyone goes on excursions organized by the cruise line. Many people use the local taxi, mini buses for sight seeing and many take a walk around the shops. Most seem to go back on board with something they have purchased, even if it’s just a bottle of booze.

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In Greenock the main beneficiaries are the taxis who pick people up and drive them off to more salubrious parts of Bonnie Scotland. Brigadoon awaits, and the imaginary destinations described in "Outllander" or JK Rowling

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We went on a cruise round the Med in 2013. Visited some lovely places but the most we ever did was buy a beer or two and a piece of tat. When you have an 'eat your own weight and more' service on the boat, you really aren't up to eating in restaurants at your destination. I certainly DIDN'T buy a Tag Heuer or similar! And to be honest, watching the tourists in George Town when several boats are in has put me off ever going on a cruise again. Snobbery I know. Herder around like sheep. No thanks.

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We have a problem here with the river cruise boats - packs roaming the city, either on foot, on bikes or in coaches - spending next to nothing.

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We normally do not eat when we are off the ship, unless we are on an early excursion, lasting all day. This is mainly because I am very fussy about what I eat.

We have never bought jewellery either. Always worried that it may be fake. I do buy the odd gift/clothes etc, depending what the shops are like.

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Having had the opportunity to view first-hand, cruise ship traffic in three different locations (Bermuda, St Lucia and here in Dorset (ten visits scheduled here for July)) I would say a lot depends upon how an individual destination is set-up to accommodate cruise ships.

In Bermuda we have a pretty-much ideal cruise-ship destination, the way it is 'worked' in that passengers typically spend three nights there on cruises ex NY and New Jersey, so passengers and crew have plenty of time to spend money locally and crew typically spend more time there than anywhere else, so use banks, shops, phones and bought accessories, hairdressers and Bermuda has Harbour Nights geared to attracting passenger spend on food, drink, what have you. As well as all this, the cruise lines and therefore pax spend substantial port fees, which Bermuda can command because Bermuda is an exclusive-sell destination ex the NY and Boston areas.

In the Caribbean, unless an island singles itself out as being somewhat unique, there is not that much to entice a cruise line apart from convenient logistics and possibly provisioning, though of course cruise passenger feedback will have some bearing. This means that big operators like Carnival will pick port fees down to the bone or they simply won't come. So it is up to islands to gear up, with purpose-built cruise passenger 'terminals' a la Philipsburg, St Kitts, St Lucia, Antigua..... to draw passenger expenditure and hopefully taxi drivers make something over and above what the local agents and their bus operators make on pre-booked tours. Other than that, there is just the odd ice cream, roti, drink and t-shirt perhaps. HOWEVER, typically, island tourism departments play the numbers game and try to convince the locals that they are doing a good job by enticing vast numbers (based on individual cruise-ship full capacity) when in fact many stay on-board and therefore spend ZERO locally apart from those port fees. A big issue is whether the ease of cruise tourism detracts from stay-over visitors, but then even the latter can be marginal, aside from employment, when all-inclusive Sandals-type holidays keep guests IN their compound for the most part and typically negotiate near ZERO taxes on profits and ship these out to the owners. What is more, such hotel groups pretty much buy-in everything DIRECT so local wholesalers struggle to get in on the action. So in such circumstances islands are pretty much left only with low wages and airport departure taxes.

I recall a debate on the merits of sinking money into improved infrastructure coming up in San Juan PR some years back when it was established that overall it made no economic sense there to be sinking money into a new cruise ship terminal to take the larger ships. However, they still built it.

100% focus on tourism in any fashion is not a happy arrangement for most island economies, particularly when slow season can be long.

Here in Weymouth/Portland, where cruise tourism is on the up and up now with the attraction of provincial English destinations such as Bath, Stonehenge, Salisbury & Jurassic Coast being easily accessible, the bus/tour operators are clearly doing well but the local merchants haven't worked out how to capture cruise passenger spend (crew load up at Tesco Metro on essentials). It's ironic that George III and large entourage traveled all the way from Windsor by coach to get here and turned it into a trendy seaside vacation spot (actually the Romans vacationed here first) which then lasted centuries and much of the attraction is still here, and yet the locals can't YET sell it to separate cruise ship passengers from their money. Fortunately, Portland had to do next to nothing to enable its port to accommodate these ships, even the large ones, like Crown Princess.