Cruising for a better year in 2007

The 2006 Cruise season came to an end last week, as the last of the giant floating hotels bid adieu to the North coast for another year. It was a bit of a transition year for the local cruise industry, where ships called on our port but didn’t deliver quite as many passengers as in 2005. As well as shorter visits for some ships who only gave their passengers five hours of shore time to wander the streets and explore our charms.

So, with a bit of a slip backwards for 2006 the Port Authority looks forward to a more bountiful 2007. A year which promises a ship in Port all day every Wednesday and one alongside on Thursday evenings, as well as the occasional visit from others during the rest of the week.

It’s a very competitive business this port of call industry, newcomers to the party this year included the likes of Nanaimo and Campbell River which are both developing their own cruise industry infra-structure, not to mention the perennial favourite ports of the Alaskan pan handle and further up the Alaskan coast.

Of interest to Prince Rupert will be the reaction to the head tax initiative recently passed by Alaskan voters, how the cruise ships react to that and other changes to the way they do business in Alaska will tell quite a story about how Prince Rupert's industry will develop.

The Daily featured a recap of the year that was and a preview of the year to come in its Friday edition.

PORT LOOKING FORWARD TO BETTER CRUISE YEAR IN 2007
More ship visits and more hours ashore expected compared to 2006
By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Pages One and Five

The Prince Rupert Port Authority is expecting more shore activity during the 2007 cruise ship season, said Shaun Stevenson, vice-president of business development.

Speaking to the Prince Rupert Chamber of Commerce, Stevenson said they expect 50 ships to stop next year.

“None of those are technical stops. The reality for the community is we will have two days a week where we will have meaningful operations and the average port time will actually lengthen,” said Stevenson, who has managed the port’s cruise relations since the opening of the Northlands Terminal in the summer of 2004.

During the 2007 season, there will be a ship in all day Wednesday and another in Thursday evening as well as sporadic stops throughout the week, he said.

“We expect we will have around 110,000 passengers, which should reflect a significant growth and impact to the community and a lot more activity in and around the waterfront area.”

The 2006 cruise ship season wrapped up last week. While the port lost a number of technical stops from Celebrity Cruises, the number of ships with visiting passengers was about the same in 2006 as it was in 2005.

“This season, we saw just shy of 65,000 passengers into Prince Rupert or about 48 ship calls between the Northland and Atlin Terminals,” said Stevenson/

”That’s down from 2005 when we saw about 100,000 cruise ship passengers into Prince Rupert. The decline is entirely attributed to a number of technical stops we lost from the Mercury that slipped down to Nanaimo. From a community perspective, an economic perspective, these last two seasons were somewhat equal but from a port operating perspective we can see an erosion of our traffic…”
This year also included shorter port calls, Stevenson said there was n increased sensitivity to fuel costs, and the port call for the Norwegian Cruise Lines vessel, the Norwegian Sun, went from seven hours in 2005 to five hours in 2006.

“That created a number of challenges. It put a tremendous amount of pressure on infrastructure, moving those passengers off the ships as quickly as possible and it created a limited opportunity for those passengers to have a meaningful shore experience in Prince Rupert,” Stevenson said.

The port saw declines of about 20 per cent in shore tours compared to last year and heard of declines in retail spending, although they will know more about the season after the visitor exit surveys for 2006 are completed.

Yet the highlight of this year was that there were quite a few more cruise lines represented on the schedule, which got to test out Prince Rupert. And it puts the port in a good position to take advantage of the coming expansion of the fleet.

The cruise ship industry is on the edge of a significant fleet expansion worldwide with a significant number of ships expected to be delivered in 2008.

“It is expected a portion of those will position themselves in the Pacific and include Alaska as part of their offering,” said Stevenson.

Meanwhile, it is unknown how the Alaska cruise ship ballot initiative will impact Prince Rupert. It could present an opportunity or could result in a challenge, it all depends on how the industry reacts, he said.

“This summer, Alaska voters passed a ballot initiative that will require a $50 head tax on passengers as well as added costs for the cruise industry and on-board-environmental monitoring.

It expected to have a $100 to $150 million operating cost to the industry and also provides incentives for lawsuits against cruise ship companies.