Good times will sail in for Art Deco Weekend

Next year's Art Deco Weekend will see the arrival of a cruise ship adding hundreds of people to the crowds on Napier's streets.

Napier's Tremains Art Deco Weekend will have an additional international flavour next year with the arrival of a cruise ship - something that has not happened on the big occasion for five years.

The scheduling of cruises is generally put into place up to three years out, and the past summers had seen the liners miss Napier often by just a day for the big event.

But the P&O Cruise Line has hit the mark with the arrival of the liner Pacific Pearl in February next year.

A four-night "sea break" from Auckland to Napier will see the liner tie up at Napier Port for the deco delights.

The arrival will add an extra spark to a season which will see 49 cruise ships call at Napier with the first being one of the last from the nearly concluded season.

The Sun Princess will arrive on October 17.

The present season is all but wrapped up with the Oosterdam having called on Tuesday and yesterday the Sun Princess. The last arrival of the season will be the 684-passenger boutique liner Insignia on May 23.

For tourism operators, transport firms, wineries and even cycling hire companies, the season had been a "very good" one, Hawke's Bay Tourism general manager Annie Dundas said. "It has been a very positive season and we have received no negative feedback at all - and that is what the cruise lines like to hear," Ms Dundas said.

"Unlike last season when we lost seven arrivals we have had no major weather issues this year - it has been very good."

She said the responses from business owners in Napier had been positive - and there had been a marked increase in the number of passengers getting off the ship and into the saddle of a hired bicycle.

"The two and four-hour guided bicycle tours we run have substantially increased this year," Fishbike bike hire manager Brian Fisher said of the cruise liner trade.

"And the people tell us how impressed they are to see how clean and tidy everything is, and the standard of the pathways."

Wineries had also noted an increase in visiting trade form cruise ships.

Napier i-Site manager Jane Libby said the devotion and dedication of staff, and the tourism operators, now worked like a "well-oiled machine".

The season will have seen 82,000 people step ashore, with the region benefiting from an estimated $25 million input.

Ms Dundas said the motel trade would also see an eventual lift as there had been several reported cases of visitors saying they had come to the Bay aboard a cruise ship and after experiencing it for day had decided to come back, for a longer visit.