OPINION
The summer cruise season is here, with about 350,000 passengers expected to visit New Zealand. They will arrive on ships of varying sizes, from those carrying just over 100 passengers to one with 40 times that number.
Many passengers will arrive with their families in tow, others will be young couples exploring the world, still others fulfilling bucket-list goals. Others will have boarded a ship to visit their friends and family in scattered places around the country instead of investing in piles of airline tickets.
What is evident, though, is that many types of ships will visit New Zealand this year, carrying many types of passengers. Not all ships are the same, not all passengers are the same, and … not all ports are the same. However, there is a tendency to lump all cruise lines, cruise ships and cruise passengers together and decide whether they are a good thing or a bad thing.
For many ports around the world, the opportunity to welcome a cruise ship to their city is a badge of pride. It is a sign of tourism success, of the community’s interest in meeting new people and sharing ideas, cultures and friendships.
I am on one of only two or three cruise ships that will make it to Norfolk Island this year. During our visit, the island turned their best and most welcoming hospitality, ending with a wonderful symphony of ship whistles at the end of the day.
Closer to home, I can’t wait for my third port call into my “home” port, New Plymouth, next month. The region is pulling together to offer this season’s visiting cruise ships a good ol’ Taranaki welcome.
For other ports, the arrival of a cruise ship symbolises over-crowding, a burden on local services and an eyesore. So far this year, we’ve witnessed an almost global Mexican Wave of disaffected ports – popular, busy ports – refusing to let previously scheduled ships in, or in some cases, limiting the number of port calls or banishing them to berths away from city centres.
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Venice and Barcelona are the most famous for both moving ships to more distant berths and limiting port calls – even though these ports are, for the most part, turnaround ports and not ports of call. In other words, ships calling into these cities start and end their voyages in there, bringing substantial new revenue to these cities as passengers call these cities home for a few days, before or after their journey. But even smaller, and often remote, destinations are joining this movement. One passenger on my current voyage was almost in tears when Bora Bora was cancelled. For her, it was the end of a childhood dream.
We’re not immune to change and community push-back in New Zealand. Akaroa did an amazing job accommodating cruise ships and their passengers following the Christchurch earthquakes, but it is now time to give this charming village a rest. This year, shuttling cruise passengers directly from their Lyttelton wharf to the Christchurch CBD will help to address local concerns and alleviate over-crowding in that small port town.
Over-crowding in cruise destinations can often be traced to the fact that tourism, generally, is designed for the steady, manageable numbers of land visitors who visit destinations (including their museums, natural attractions, restaurants etc) and use their public transportation. Destinations, except for cruise lines’ private islands, were not designed to accommodate the hundreds – or even thousands – of cruise passengers who descend on them for 6 to 8 hours on any given day.
However, it would be a shame for our ports which have capacity for cruise activity to join the Mexican Wave just because they can. Instead, we need to be clever about how we manage our visiting cruise ships and their passengers. Losing the forecast $600 million to be spent by passengers (direct spend) and their ships (indirect spend, i.e. fuel, supplies, food, etc) would be a blow to our economy, especially given that cruise is likely to continue as the fastest growing sector in the tourism industry, promising even more spend in future years.
Also, last-minute decisions to turn ships away are always a huge disappointment for passengers, given that they – and their ships – often book their cruises up to three years in advance.
So, what can we do about it? We need to come up with a strategic approach, not the one we have now where ships – including the very large Post-Panamax ships - are welcomed to our ports on a first-come, first-serve basis. Despite the fact that I am a crazy, mad cruise ship addict, I am not a fan of the massive, new resort-type ships. To me, they look like a cross between the big American amusement parks and the Pompidou Centre in Paris, with its exterior pipes, tubes, cables and appendages. However, I think there is a way to manage those ships, too.
Plugging into shore power and requiring ships to burn light fuel oil helps, but neither solves the problem of crowding onshore. However, clever, strategic means of controlling the number and flow of passengers also need to be found, with any solution requiring consultation with all stakeholders – communities, local services, ports, tourism operators and cruise lines.
Perhaps the solution lies in a two-pronged approach. For example, ports could consider limiting unrestricted port calls to ships carrying 2000 or fewer passengers or whose weight is, for example, less than 85,000 tons. Ships carrying more than 2000 passengers or which are more than a specified weight would be required to moor offshore, tendering their passengers to shore. Tendering is itself a limiting activity, given that tendering takes time and has the inherent advantage of spreading passenger arrivals onshore over many hours.
Limiting the ability to land passengers onshore by the size of their ship is not an unknown concept. Passengers visiting Antarctica can go on the ice only if their ships carry 500 passengers or less. Even then, only ships with 100 or fewer passengers can land their passengers in one large group, while the ships which carry up to 500 passengers have to land them in groups. Passengers on ships with more than 500 passengers have to be content with savouring this magical continent from their ships.
There is, however, one trend in our favour, and that is that there is a growth in the number of smaller, exploration and expedition type ships that are being deployed. This year, we will see many ships with fewer than 2000 passengers calling into our ports, and some much smaller than that.
What is important, though, is that we don’t succumb to the practice of throwing all ships and all cruise passengers onto the too-hard pile. We just need to get more strategic on how we welcome them.
Dr Wendy R London is an internationally recognised cruise industry specialist and cruise writer who lives in Hawera. She has a Masters in Tourism from Otago University and a PhD from Griffith University in Queensland. Her PhD was about Auckland’s cruise terminal development.
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