D’Aguilar touts increase in berth bookings for 2022

With uncertainty about when the return of cruise ship sailings will happen this year, Minister of Tourism and Aviation Dionisio D’Aguilar touted a nearly ten percent increase in berth bookings for the Port of Nassau in 2022.

D’Aguilar said Nassau’s cruise port has already received 810 berth requests for the last six months of 2021 – a 20 percent increase over the 682 cruise ships that called on the port during the last six months of 2019, which was a record year for cruise arrivals in The Bahamas.

However, if things don’t pan out as planned later this year, D’Aguilar said things are looking up for a strong return of the cruise industry next year.

“Let us assume 2021 does not materialize. In 2019, the cruise port received 1,183 cruise ships. Right now on the books, there are 1,284 berth requests for 2022, which represents 101 more ships than those that called in 2019, an increase of almost nine percent. Don’t mind what the naysayers are saying, this project is quickly developing into a home run for the Bahamian people and The Bahamas,” he said during his contribution to debate on the 2020/2021 mid-year budget in the House of Assembly yesterday.

“Sometimes, we undersell ourselves. Clearly, as it relates to the Port of Nassau, the former government did just that. We have a country that is ideally set up for a cruise company. Its proximity to the three busiest cruise ports in the world – Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Cape Canaveral – make it a highly desirable destination.”

Carnival Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean Group have both pushed their sail dates back to June 1, as they await the all-clear from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to set sail again.

As of October 30 last year, the CDC has taken on a phased approach to resuming passenger operations for cruise ships, implementing the Framework for Conditional Sailing Order, which requires that cruise ship operators must demonstrate adherence to COVID-19 testing, quarantine, isolation and social distancing requirements to protect crew members, before passenger travel will be allowed to resume in later phases.

“Prior to the pandemic, Nassau’s cruise port received just over 3.6 million passengers annually or 10,000 persons every day of the year, making it one of the busiest transit cruise ports in the world. Cruise executives advise that they expect the CDC to have completed their review of the protocols to resume cruises by the latter part of this year at the very latest,” said D’Aguilar.

“Cruise companies are itching to go. The CDC is presently consumed with the vaccine rollout, which should essentially be done by June or July this year, allowing them to bring focus to the cruise industry. The new cruise port development in Nassau is gaining keen interest in the cruise companies.”

The CDC implemented a no sail order on March 14, 2020, which ground the global cruise industry to a halt.

Cruise sailings have resumed in some parts of the world, however cruise companies have not said when they intend to begin sailing from the United States, which is The Bahamas’ source market.

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source https://thenassauguardian.com/daguilar-touts-increase-in-berth-bookings-for-2022/