Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Car­val­ho’s Agen­cies Charles Car­val­ho says so far, des­ti­na­tion T&T has had a very lu­cra­tive cruise sea­son.

He said when the sea­son first be­gan in Oc­to­ber to now, thou­sands of vis­i­tors have ar­rived.

Ac­cord­ing to Car­val­ho to date, the to­tal num­ber of pas­sen­gers land­ed on­shore is 139,640 along with 51,988 crew mem­bers.

These vis­its, he said, have al­so brought in much need rev­enue from the coun­try with vis­i­tor spend rang­ing from taxi fares to tourists buy­ing lo­cal craft items which in turn, crit­i­cal­ly sup­ports small busi­ness­es.

“At the craft mar­ket at the port vis­i­tors do spend quite a bit of mon­ey,” Car­val­ho added.

Car­val­ho, who works close­ly with the Min­istry of Tourism and is re­spon­si­ble for or­gan­is­ing cruise lin­ers to dock at the var­i­ous ports at both Trinidad and To­ba­go, shared fur­ther in­sights about the progress of the cruise sea­son which ends on April 19, 2023.

“When we had COVID which was for about two and a half years, it was very rough for us so now these vis­its made up a lot of ground,” Car­val­ho said.

On Sat­ur­day, Trinidad wel­comed the Emer­ald Princess on her maid­en jour­ney to the port of Port-of-Spain.

A post by the Tourism Min­istry said vis­i­tors were treat­ed to a per­for­mance by the Bi­ra­ha Ra­ja Chow­tal Group, as fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Tourism Trinidad in cel­e­bra­tion of Phag­wa to wel­come vis­i­tors.

Re­gard­ing up­com­ing vis­its be­fore the sea­son clos­es, Car­val­ho said these in­clude the Rhap­sody of the Seas call­ing un­til April 18.

Car­val­ho said to date 79 ships have vis­it­ed both is­lands, with these ves­sels com­ing main­ly from the Unit­ed States and Bar­ba­dos, some al­so from Guade­loupe.

Next year’s sea­son, he said, looks even brighter as there are 118 calls planned be­tween T&T.

Car­val­ho al­so de­tailed some of the ex­pect­ed vis­its from the var­i­ous lin­ers.

“We have quite a num­ber of Princess ships com­ing. We have the Celebri­ty in To­ba­go. I speak of T&T as one des­ti­na­tion be­cause we han­dle three ports with­in the coun­try; Port-of-Spain, Char­lot­teville and Scar­brough.

“We al­so have some Hol­land Amer­i­ca ships com­ing. We will al­so have some Seaborne ships com­ing which will not be many but they usu­al­ly go to To­ba­go,” Car­val­ho added.