Tuesday, May 2, 2006

BASSETERRE, St Kitts: There is more good news for taxi drivers, craft vendors, tour operators and other businesses and stakeholders in the cruise industry in St Kitts.

Cunard’s 2,620-passenger Queen Mary 2, will once again make five calls to St Kitts during the 2006/2007 Cruise Ship Season and add a further eight calls in the 2007/2008 Season for a total of 13 port calls.

This will be complemented by two calls in 2007/2008 from the Queen Mary 2’s sister ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2).

Minister of State for Tourism, Sports & Culture, Sen. Richard “Ricky” Skerritt, made the disclosure following his recent trip to meet cruise executives in Florida.

“The Cunard deployment of the QM2 and the QE2 for 2007/2008 is wonderful news for the Federation,” said Skerritt.

“Taken with the announcement of the new Carnival Cruise Line ship adding St Kitts as a port of call, and of additional ships being deployed to St Kitts by Royal Caribbean International Cruise Lines and Celebrity Cruises, we can reasonably expect that cruise ship traffic to St Kitts will top 300,000 visitors in 2007/2008 for the very first time,” said Skerritt.

The QM2 was the largest and most luxurious ship in the world when she made her debut in 2004/2005. Her inaugural season in the Caribbean planned five visits to St Kitts, but problems with the depth of the harbour in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on the first sailing there forced Cunard to re-examine her itinerary.

The redesigned dock at Port Zante was one of only two in the region deep enough at the dock face and long enough in length to accommodate the ship. Quick decisions were made by the Cunard Operations management team. The result was an unexpected windfall of seven additional calls into St Kitts, with a total of 11 visits for the QM2 in the 2004/2005 season. Altogether the QM2 brought 28,820 passengers to the Federation during that first season.

With her itinerary back to normal, the QM2 had only five scheduled port calls to St Kitts in 2005/2006. But several key executives from Cunard attended the week-long Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association Convention at the end of September 2005 in St Kitts, and were impressed by what they saw.

The QM2 will dock at Port Zante on Wednesday 6th December 2006, Wednesday 20th December 2006, Wednesday 3rd January 2007, Saturday 7th April 2007, and Saturday 14 April 2007.

The Queen Elizabeth 2, with a capacity of 1,791 passengers, will visit on 2nd May 2007, bringing the total Cunard berths for that season to 14,891 passengers.

With the 13 calls by the QM2 and the two by the QE2, Cunard will bring 35,851 passengers to St Kitts, twice the passengers seen in either of the previous two seasons, and 7,000 more than in the windfall year of 2004/2005 from this cruise line.

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