GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

With the of­fi­cial launch of the cruise sea­son in T&T, a 5,800-pas­sen­ger ves­sel is ex­pect­ed to grace these shores soon.

Ac­cord­ing to Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell the coun­try will see the ar­rival of a to­tal of 71 cruise calls; 21 will be in Port-of-Spain and four of those will be in­au­gur­al sail­ings.

“It will in­clude a mas­sive 5,800-pas­sen­ger MSC Seashore to dock right here,” Mitchell ex­plained.

The min­is­ter was speak­ing at the of­fi­cial launch of the 2022/2023 cruise ship sea­son held at the Cruise Ship Com­plex, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Mitchell said 17 calls are ex­pect­ed from the Roy­al Caribbean Group and he hopes each will be more mem­o­rable than the last.

Af­ter 20 years, Roy­al Caribbean re­turned to Trinidad with the Rhap­sody of the Seas be­ing the first cruise ship to vis­it in two years.

Say­ing he is thrilled by the re­turn of cruise ships to T&T, Mitchell said the Gov­ern­ment has been work­ing with the op­er­a­tors to re­gain mo­men­tum which had been lost fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“We are ex­treme­ly ex­cit­ed. I think the cruise lines and the cruise in­dus­try are even more ex­cit­ed than us in terms of build­ing back the cruise in­dus­try af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“We con­stant­ly work with them in part­ner­ship with many of the cruise lines, in par­tic­u­lar, this one which is owned by the Roy­al Caribbean group,” Mitchell added.

The cruise line has had a strong con­nec­tion with this coun­try with many lo­cals work­ing on­board.
Around 2,000 peo­ple from T&T were em­ployed by the Roy­al Caribbean in June fol­low­ing re­cruit­ment.

Re­gard­ing the health pro­to­cols, Mitchell said his min­istry has worked close­ly with the Min­istry of Health, the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (Carpha) and the cruise in­dus­try, to en­sure mea­sures are in place.

“When there is an out­break of COVID or any sick­ness on­board, the ships are now able to treat with out­breaks, so they do not have to take any­body ashore un­less the pas­sen­ger is se­ri­ous­ly ill.

“The en­tire cruise in­dus­try has put new health pro­to­cols in place to en­sure des­ti­na­tions and cit­i­zens are safe if there are any out­breaks,” Mitchell re­it­er­at­ed.

Tourism Trinidad Ltd CEO Car­la Cu­pid, who al­so spoke, said its plans to de­vel­op cruise tourism falls in­to the cat­e­go­ry of a “marathon rather than a sprint.

“What that means is that get­ting a cruise line to come to any des­ti­na­tion re­quires strate­gic con­ver­sa­tions with ex­ec­u­tives who are no doubt hear­ing the same con­ver­sa­tions from rep­re­sen­ta­tives like us from oth­er is­lands or even oth­er coun­tries be­cause the space in which we com­pete has be­come so much small­er,” she ex­plained.

In de­tail­ing strides made dur­ing the year Cu­pid said par­tic­i­pa­tion in con­fer­ences like the Flori­da Caribbean Cruise As­so­ci­a­tion and Seatrade is im­por­tant in tak­ing the in­dus­try to the next step. “Their guests or pas­sen­gers, post-COVID are look­ing for a more au­then­tic, en­gag­ing, and most im­por­tant­ly cul­tur­al­ly rich ex­pe­ri­ence,” Cu­pid added.