CruiseNews

The port of Barcelona has recorded nearly one million cruise ship passengers in the first half of 2011 (January to June). Barcelona is already the biggest mediterranean port when it comes to cruise ship traffic, reaching levels of the major cruise ports in the caribbean. For years Barcelona has bet on becoming the Miami of the med, and because of its location and attractions as a tourist destination, Barcelona just needed the adequate facilities and time to get there. The conversion of its recreational and commercial port in the early 90s allowed the smaller terminals located near the centre of the city to hold small luxury cruise ships. The transformation of Barcelona dock into the world trade center expanded port capacity for medium-sized cruises. And more recently the construction of additional terminals in the docks provided the size needed for larger cruise ships. Of the 2.5 million cruise passengers that will pass through Barcelona this year, more than half started or ended their journey in Barcelona. These visitors often spend several days in town before or after boarding, and demand a wide range of accommodation that fits their tourism profile. Barcelona offers this variety not only in hotels but also in 3 bedroom apartments. Families on a cruise vacation can plan the perfect break and opt for a large, well equipped apartment, with a much lower cost than a hotel, with thoughtful extras like a washer and dryer, much needed after a week on board a ship. And those who choose a luxury boat trip enjoy an experience of exclusivity and distinction, a full service apartment in Barcelona can be truly luxurious, with large spaces, designer furniture, works of art, fresh flowers and continuing personal attention. Click here to view the article

The St. Lawrence River is trying to build its cruise business, just like Alaska's Inside Passage. It's a bold and ambitious plan, considering that last year only 150,000 people went cruising on the St. Lawrence, compared to the 1.5 million who sailed Alaskan waters. But the St. Lawrence has plenty to offer: 12 species of whales, fjords (the Saguenay Fjord is 100 miles long), hundreds of miles of beaches and scenery so spectacular that when you see photos such as the lighthouse in Îles de la Madeleine, you want to put yourself right there, right now. Add in French-Canadian culture and cuisine, the Innu community in Sept-Îles and the history of one of North America's great commercial arteries (the First Nations called the St. Lawrence "the way that walks"), and you've got one compelling itinerary for great cruise. Canada, Quebec and local communities are investing $156 million in making the St. Lawrence one of North America's premier international cruise destinations. To make sure local infrastructure can deliver a world-class cruise experience, the Canadian government has put its money where its mouth is. Canada, Quebec and local communities are investing $156 million in making the St. Lawrence one of North America's premier international cruise destinations. The result is there's more to cruising the St. Lawrence than calling in Montreal, Trois-Rivieres and Quebec. Now Saguenay, Baie-Comeau, Sept-Îles, Havre-Saint-Pierre, Gaspesie and Iles de la Madeleine all have top-notch port facilities thanks to investments made over the last three years. This means the St. Lawrence now has nine ports of call that can handle the industry's largest cruise ships. Some ports have entirely new docks and others have modernized their terminals so that they can handle even the biggest cruise ships. The roots of this initiative date back to 2008, when the governments of Canada and Quebec unveiled a strategy to develop international cruising on the St. Lawrence and in the Saguenay Fjord. Canada has budgeted $60 million to provide berths for high-tonnage ships. Quebec has invested $52 million and local communities have also contributed. About $104 million has already been spent and the entire project should be complete by 2013. The plan includes marketing and advertising to promote cruises on the St. Lawrence, particularly the six new ports. The St. Lawrence offers a varied cruise experience, one whose dozens of islands mean cruise ships can vary routes to deliver distinct experiences. The St. Lawrence offers a varied cruise experience, one whose dozens of islands mean cruise ships can vary routes to deliver distinct experiences. The river has ruggedly steep, seaside bluffs, otherworldly rock formations (one that is the result of a meteorite crater in Baie-Comeau), small fishing villages and cities (not just Montreal and Quebec City but the Saguenay region as well). Most cruise departures for the St. Lawrence are from New York and Boston and last seven to 10 days. Activities include whale watching, sea kayaking, salmon fishing in the Atlantic, hydroplane and helicopter tours, to name just a few. Holland America Line's Maasdam has been a stalwart on this route, but other ships now sailing the St. Lawrence include Cunard Line's Queen Elizabeth, making its inaugural stopover Sept. 26 and 27, Silversea Cruises' Silver Explorer and Seabourn Cruise Line's Sojourn. Other cruise lines active on the St. Lawrence between 2010 and 2012 include Crystal Cruises, Fred. Olsen Cruises, Hapag Lloyd Cruises, Oceania Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, Costa Cruises, Princess Cruises and several others. For more information, visit Cruise the Saint Lawrence's website. Click here to view the article

Sea Princess is set to embark on three 13-night circumnavigations of New Zealand departing from Auckland later this year. A first for the cruise line, ports will include Tauranga, Napier, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. “New Zealand is a very popular destination for Princess passengers and now New Zealanders have the opportunity to easily board a Princess cruise in their own country,” said Stan Birge, commercial director for Princess Cruises. The new series of itineraries also includes a nine-night cruise around New Zealand with embarkation in Auckland and disembarkation in Sydney along with a Tasmanian itinerary departing Sydney and returning to Auckland via the Bay of Islands. “New Zealand passengers are well catered with a selection of acclaimed local wines and beers served on board. New Zealand culinary delights also feature prominently in the restaurant menus,” Mr Birge shared. Past passengers will be eligible for ‘Captain’s Circle Savings’ with benefits of up to $100 per person on these voyages. Click here to view the article

According to the Cruise the Saint Lawrence Association and Martin Lachance, product manager, Greater Quebec Tourism Bureau, Quebec City will have welcomed 85,000 cruise passengers by the end of 2011. Almost half of those passengers are from turnarounds, and for 2012, Quebec City is expecting 100,000 passengers. “But, we are aiming for more,” Lachance noted, who also said his goal is to boost cruise operations in Quebec, which only accounts for a small piece of the global cruise market. Quebec City will host the 2012 Cruise Canada New England Symposium, June 12-14, 2012. Local authorities, including the Greater Québec Tourism Bureau and members have agreed to commit a combination of enhanced efforts and increased funding. The investment, at $1.9 million, will make it possible to spur regional marketing initiatives over a period of three years. Funds will be used to improve marketing, boost the tourist supply and promote local buying. Click here to view the article

Royal Caribbean International is offering deals for its Crown & Anchor Society December Celebration, including onboard benefits and a double-Cruise Points bonus for Diamond level- and higher-status Crown & Anchor Society members who make a booking for the last month of the year. The line also has extended the Crown & Anchor Society Bring a Friend incentive. Members can receive a $25 onboard credit per stateroom when they invite and make a new booking with their first-to-Royal friends or family in additional staterooms on the same sailing. The offer is applicable for up to five staterooms per sailing for new bookings. Click here to view the article

With 142 cruise visits completed this season, more than 200 000 cruise guests have visited Oslo so far this year, according to the latest Oslo Cruise Network Newsletter. It said that shore excursions within the city have been popular, and boat trips to the museums at Bygdoy continue to be a favorite. ICEBAR has doubled its visitors from 2010 to 2011 in the period May-August. Hard Rock Cafe and Oslo Sweater Shop at the Cruise terminal have been the most popular shops for souvenirs. Thirty-two ships are yet to call this year, and the outlook for 2012 was described as "very promising." Click here to view the article

Costa Rica’s cruise season began earlier this month when the Dawn Princess arrived at the Port of Puntarenas on Costa Rica’s South Pacific Coast. The cruise industry accounts for 18 percent of the 2.1 million visitors the country receives annually, with major cruise liners arriving at Puntarenas and the Port of Limón on the country’s Caribbean coast. During the 2009-2010 season, a total of 264 ships docked in Costa Rica, bringing a total of 385,363 visitors, a record figure for the past 15 years and a 5.4 percent increase on the previous season. In addition, the Costa Rica Tourism Board is working with other Central American countries to identify new opportunities for ports in the region and collaboratively develop new cruise itineraries highlighting the region’s key tourist offerings and destinations. Click here to view the article

The first Turner Classic Movies (TCM) Classic Cruise will take place Dec. 8-12 and will feature film legends Ernest Borgnine, Tippi Hedren, Eva Marie Saint and Norman Jewison, along with TCM's primetime host Robert Osborne, TCM weekend-daytime host Ben Mankiewicz and the Alloy Orchestra. The four-day voyage aboard the Celebrity Millennium will sailing from Miami to Key West and Cozumel. Among the special onboard events will be "Hitchcock Blondes: Eva Marie Saint and Tippi Hedren," who will share their memories of working with legendary director Alfred Hitchcock; "A Conversation with Ernest Borgnine," who, with Osborne, will discuss the 94-year-old Oscar winner's life and career; "Key Largo in the Keys," where the Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall film "Key Largo" will play while the ship sails the Florida Keys; and "A Poolside Affair," a poolside screening of "An Affair to Remember." Click here to view the article

Royal Caribbean is planning on sending more ships to Australia, but the company has concerns that the Australian ports could become overwhelmed by demand in the very near future. Royal Caribbean feels that if a new terminal in Sydney, Australia isn't built soon, the port will reach capacity in 2013. Australia is enjoying increasing demand and the market for cruises is expanding so quickly that the facilities in place today will not be able to keep up with the increasing number of large cruise ships entering Sydney harbor. Royal Caribbean's Australian managing director Gavin Smith released a statement that covers the growing concern, "We have a good situation that needs attention before becoming a problem." Royal Caribbean wants the New South Wales government to reconsider the $60 million allocated by the previous Labor government to build a new terminal in White Bay, in Sydney's inner west. Smith continued, "Our view is $60 million is a considerable amount of money to invest in a permanent terminal west of the Harbour Bridge that most ships calling into Sydney in the future won't be able to use. It would be more prudent and viable to redeploy a large part of the funding towards a terminal (east of the bridge) the whole industry can use" Royal Caribbean has a good reason to be concerned, given their announcement that they will quadruple the amount of guests they will handle over the next few cruise seasons. Click here to view the article

Attention twihards and fangbangers, get ready for your chance set sail on a weeklong Vampire Convention at Sea. That's right, Holland America's Zuiderdam will play host for fans of the undead as the ship departs from Vancouver and cruises throughout Alaska's Inside Passage. The ship will make stops in Juneau, Glacier Bay, Skagway, and Ketchikan from June 23-30,2012 (too bad this didn't take place in winter when the lack of sun would afford the vamps more time to play). On board, you can expect some blood-sucking goodness with special guests like Dacre Stoker (Bram Stoker's great grand nephew) and PhD candidate and vampire scholar John Edgar Browning who will be hosting the vampire movie festival. There are also a lot more events like A Vampire Ball, Scareoke Party, Costume Contest, Auction for Charity (proceeds going to the Blood Donor division of the American Red Cross), Team Trivia Contest, Vendors Room, and a weeklong Scavenger Hunt rounds out the weeks activities. Cruise fares start at $1,060 per person, based on double occupancy. Click here to view the article

Senator Ricky Skerritt, Minister of Tourism & International Transport, has announced that cruise visitor arrivals to St. Kitts are expected to increase by more than 20 percent in the upcoming October 2011 - September 2012 cruise ship season. This announcement was madeat a local cruise stakeholders’ unveiling of the island’s 2011-2012 cruise ship schedule on Tuesday. “It is a significant achievement for St. Kitts to be able to forecast a fifth consecutive year of growth in cruise arrivals for the upcoming season,” said Minister Skerritt. “Based on the bookings we have so far, we have projected that more than 650,000 cruise passengers will arrive to St. Kitts by September 2012 and we will strive to ensure that each and every one of those visitors enjoys a high quality experience of our island.” Most of the major cruise companies operating in the Caribbean now call at St. Kitts. The lines that are scheduled to make calls to St. Kitts in the 2011-2012 cruise ship season include Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Holland America, Norwegian Cruise Line, Princess, P & O, Cunard, Azamara, Seabourn, Silver Sea, Star Clipper, Windstar, Fred Olson, Saga, Thompson and TUI Cruises. In the 2009-2010 cruise season, St. Kitts passed the half million passenger arrival mark for the first time in its history. For the past three consecutive years, cruise berth arrivals have exceeded average regional levels. In addition, St. Kitts now has two ships making year round calls to Port Zante, bringing an estimated 88,000 passengers to St. Kitts in the off-season. Year round calls first began in St Kitts in 2008. Further development of onshore attractions and the prospect of a second cruise pier at Port Zante are expected to continue to fuel the development of cruise tourism for the island. A heavily pedestrianized commercial development of the land side of Port Zante over the past 6 years, including a world class duty free shopping area, has added to the beauty of the historic capital city of Basseterre and has been key to establishing St. Kitts as a leading Caribbean cruise destination. The construction of the pier at Port Zante measuring1,434 feet in length and with sufficient draught, or depth, has allowed the island to accommodate any of today’s largest ships including “Oasis” class vessels, with the ‘Allure of the Seas’ scheduled to make its inaugural call at Port Zante on December 30, 2011. Over the past months, St. Kitts was named a top destination for 2011 by both AOL Travel and British Airways. Located in the northern Leeward Islands of the Caribbean, it offers a diverse tourism product developed from the destination’s natural beauty, cultural heritage and rich history. The island’s stunning variety of tourism attractions include hiking through the tropical rainforest, riding the scenic railway that connects the island’s former sugar plantations, visiting the Caribelle Batik factory, touring Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, the only man-made UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Eastern Caribbean, and more traditional vacation pastimes such as watersports, golf, shopping, tennis, gourmet dining, gaming at St. Kitts’ exclusive casino or simply relaxing on one of the island’s sandy beaches. Accommodations range from intimate plantation inns to larger hotels and resorts. Click here to view the article

The countdown is on for Celebrity Cruises’ first ship to hit Australian waters this November. Celebrity Century will home port in Sydney for the Australian summer before making way for her big sister Celebrity Solstice in the summer of 2012-13. “There’s no greater substantiation for the interest in this market than the investment the company’s (RCI) making in the largest and most modern cruise ship ever to call Australia home which will be in the summer of 2012-2013,” said Gavin Smith, managing director Celebrity Cruises Australia. President and CEO of Celebrity Cruises, Dan Hanrahan, flew into Sydney last week ahead of the deployment to speak with Australian media and agents about the Celebrity offering and sang the praises of the land down under. Mr Hanrahan expressed his long-term goal to have more than one ship home port in Sydney during the summer but recognised that improvements need to be made to the Sydney port situation in order to achieve this. Highlighting the economic benefits to NSW as a whole, Mr Hanrahan expects over $1 million in revenue to be generated per day that a Celebrity ship visits Sydney. “The port has some interesting opportunities ahead of it…if the port can figure out how to accommodate large ships as well as small ships, the beneficiary of that will be the greater Sydney area and NSW in general.” Whilst having a good port infrastructure is important, Mr Hanrahan explained that something simple can always be effective. He cited the port in Hamburg, Germany as an example which was constructed out of shipping containers for the recent inaugural sailing of Celebrity Silhouette and reiterated that the line can work within the conditions provided to them. Click here to view the article