There is still just over a month left to go for the cruise ship sea­son in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but stake­hold­ers are al­ready hail­ing this sea­son as a ma­jor suc­cess, with some even de­scrib­ing it as the best sea­son in decades.

This was the view of the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Car­val­ho’s Agen­cies, Charles Car­val­ho, who tout­ed it as the best cruise ship sea­son in al­most 15 years.

Car­val­ho said, “We’ve had bet­ter sea­sons than this be­fore and that would have been about 15 years ago. So this year was like a sur­prise to us based on pre­vi­ous years and we just wish that it would con­tin­ue. This is a good year for us. What is nice about this year is that the pas­sen­gers are very ac­tive so they want to ex­plore.”

Syd­ney Valere, pres­i­dent of Trinidad and To­ba­go Tourist Trans­port Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion, which is re­spon­si­ble for all the trans­port op­tions for vis­i­tors from the cruise ships in­clud­ing con­ven­tion­al taxis, small taxis or large bus­es, was con­ser­v­a­tive in his es­ti­mate but still gave the sea­son a glow­ing re­view.

“This sea­son has been by far the best since COVID-19. We were quite pleased with the amount of cruise ships that we’ve been get­ting, es­pe­cial­ly the one to­day (last Tues­day), the Jew­el of Seas that has been com­ing in very con­sis­tent­ly since No­vem­ber to now and go­ing all the way to March next year. So we have been quite pleased with the per­for­mance of the cruise ship sea­son thus far,” said Valere in an in­ter­view with Sun­day Busi­ness fol­low­ing the ar­rival of the Jew­el of the Seas and Sev­en Seas Splen­dor.

Valere stat­ed on that day, the as­so­ci­a­tion had pro­vid­ed trans­porta­tion for 1,000 pas­sen­gers on that day, but it was just one of many busy days maxi dri­vers and oth­er trans­port fa­cil­i­ta­tors would have seen through­out the sea­son.

A fur­ther 1,131 pas­sen­gers from the Emer­ald Princess, which ar­rived on Wednes­day, booked tours us­ing 69 maxi taxis.

“To­day (Tues­day), the to­tal num­ber of pas­sen­gers on both ships is some­where close to 3,000. And the num­ber of tours that we did joint­ly be­tween both of them will have been ap­prox­i­mate­ly close to 1,000,” said Valere, “The Splen­dor is ba­si­cal­ly a plat­inum ship, a lux­u­ry ship and most of the pas­sen­gers on that ship went on pre-booked tours.”

How­ev­er, Valere not­ed that the Jew­el of Seas, which had come reg­u­lar­ly over the course of the sea­son, had brought vary­ing groups to is­lands with dif­fer­ing in­ter­ests.

“They have changed a bit in terms of the type of eth­nic groups. Ba­si­cal­ly (the cruise) starts from Puer­to Ri­co. And what has hap­pened since No­vem­ber in­to De­cem­ber, ear­ly Jan­u­ary, was the fact that we had a lot of Puer­to Ri­cans. They come to par­ty and have a good time, a Tri­ni kin­da lime,” ex­plained Valere.

He said the vis­i­tors from a fel­low Caribbean is­land were more about cre­at­ing their own ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­plor­ing lo­cal food and drink as op­posed to tourism pack­ages.

“The Puer­to Ri­cans, they were not in­to sight­see­ing. They had Tri­ni blood in them. It was par­ty. They com­ing with their own mu­sic, they dance, they drink beer, they be­came in­stant Tri­nis al­most every call. There was noth­ing like they want to see here and see there, no, no, no. That didn’t mat­ter to them. It was kind of I tast­ed your Carib, can I taste your Stag? Can I taste this, so they live our cul­ture for the show. So they came from No­vem­ber to the mid­dle of Jan­u­ary,” said Valere.

This was a ma­jor con­trast to tourists from North Amer­i­ca.

“Then we have seen it change some­what to the Eng­lish-speak­ing Amer­i­can (tourists) and Amer­i­can Amer­i­cans don’t seem to un­der­stand Tri­ni kind of lime and par­ty and that kind of thing and they were more in­to pre-booked tours.”

Ei­ther way, Valere ex­plained, stake­hold­ers at­tached to the cruise-ship in­dus­try were made busy in a good way.

“The ca­pac­i­ty of the tours went up (with the Amer­i­can tourists) and that was good. I mean it was good from all per­spec­tives. The as­so­ci­a­tion gets work, the stake­hold­ers get work, the peo­ple on the streets get work, the tour guides get work, and the des­ti­na­tions that we have gone to have al­so been in­clud­ed. So al­to­geth­er we are quite pleased with the per­for­mance of the cruise ship in­dus­try for this sea­son.”

The tourists were al­so giv­en sig­nif­i­cant op­tions in terms of tours made avail­able with tours vary­ing from sim­ple tours of Port of Spain to some of Trinidad’s nat­ur­al sights.

Among the tours made avail­able to tourists on Tues­day in­clud­ed a trip to Mara­cas Wa­ter­fall, a city tour fol­lowed by a vis­it to Mara­cas Bay, a ded­i­cat­ed voy­age to the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary or an op­tion to go kayak­ing in Ca­roni, while oth­er op­tions in­clud­ed a vis­it to Paramin be­fore head­ing to Mara­cas beach.

For the less eco or na­ture-in­clined, tours to the House of An­gos­tu­ra, Mt St Bene­dict and a pan the­atre were in­clud­ed, while oth­ers look­ing to have a cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ence were treat­ed to a show at Sound Forge in Mu­cu­rapo.

While many pas­sen­gers have opt­ed to book pre-pack­aged arrange­ments from the cruise ship, Valere not­ed that sev­er­al cruise ship pas­sen­gers would look to in­de­pen­dent trans­port op­tions to try to save on their trips. This too, worked out well for his as­so­ci­a­tion, which had dri­vers based at the Cruise Ship com­plex.

“They want to ei­ther cus­tomise their own thing or go on the same to us as a ship that’s a bit cheap­er. So they may not want to go with what the ship is of­fer­ing in terms of the cost, but it does seem to be­cause it’s a bit cheap­er. But it is a fixed price, whichev­er dri­ver you se­lect,” said Valere, “It’s a fixed price that is set in con­junc­tion with the Port Au­thor­i­ty and with the In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tor As­so­ci­a­tion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Tourist Trans­port. It is a com­bi­na­tion of three of us. When we sit to­geth­er and we set a price it is fixed maybe for two, three years, some­times more.”

Valere, how­ev­er, echoed a call made by Car­val­ho at the start of the sea­son for the fa­cil­i­ties at the Port to be ex­pand­ed so larg­er ships could come to Trinidad.

“From a per­son­al per­spec­tive, I like to see that the fa­cil­i­ty, and where we have the in­fra­struc­ture, can im­prove to in­crease the num­ber of cruise ships ar­riv­ing.”

Tourism Trinidad Ltd (TTL) in a re­lease on Tues­day backed the stake­hold­ers’ as­sess­ment, stat­ing, “The 2023-2024 cruise sea­son has been suc­cess­ful thus far, with a to­tal of 25 ves­sels call­ing bring­ing in 57,424 pas­sen­gers and 21,097 crew mem­bers. Near­ly 40,000 pas­sen­gers have dis­em­barked and ex­plored our beau­ti­ful is­land, with an av­er­age spend of US$43 per per­son, con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to our lo­cal econ­o­my.”

At the start of the sea­son, Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell es­ti­mat­ed that the Cruise Ship sea­son could raise TT$56 mil­lion.

The sea­son is set to end in April.