Tourism Min­is­ter Ger­ald Hadeed met this week with se­nior ex­ec­u­tives from three cruise ship lines. Steven Young of P&O Cruis­es, James Lan­g­ley of Saga Cruis­es and Claudius Do­cekal of Aza­ma­ra Club Cruis­es are on a fa­mil­iari­sa­tion vis­it to T&T to see what the coun­try has to of­fer their ships and pas­sen­gers on a cruise call.

Dis­cus­sions fo­cused on ways in which the num­ber of cruise calls could be in­creased, pos­si­bil­i­ties for home port­ing and fu­el bunker­ing and oth­er ves­sel pro­vi­sion­ing and how T&T could de­vel­op unique and dif­fer­ent shore ex­cur­sions that will ap­peal to pas­sen­gers.

Dur­ing their vis­it, the cruise line ex­ec­u­tives toured the port of Port of Spain and cruise fa­cil­i­ties and ex­pe­ri­enced some of the tours of­fered to their pas­sen­gers. Meet­ings were al­so arranged with the lo­cal ship­ping agent and the Port Au­thor­i­ty man­age­ment team.

Hadeed said Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to in­crease cruise ship calls and to de­vel­op new tours for pas­sen­gers.

"I am look­ing for­ward to hold­ing fur­ther dis­cus­sions with these cruise lines with a view to en­hanc­ing the suc­cess­ful work­ing re­la­tion­ship we al­ready en­joy with them," he said.

Tak­ing part in the meet­ing with the cruise line ex­ec­u­tives were Don­na Fer­raz, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Min­istry of Tourism; Kei­th Chin, CEO, Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (TDC); Char­maine Lewis, CEO, Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T; Balka­ran Ma­haraj, man­ag­er of cruise ship­ping at the Port Au­thor­i­ty; and Greer As­sam, TDC's cruise sec­tor spe­cial­ist.