An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty are top pri­or­i­ties for the 2024/2025 cruise ship sea­son, which be­gan on Tues­day.

So Port of Spain deputy may­or Abena Hart­ley on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade yes­ter­day.

She not­ed that the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion learnt some lessons from last year and would in­crease foot pa­trols in the city dur­ing the sea­son.

PoS City Cor­po­ra­tion su­per­in­ten­dent, Glen Charles, as­sured that there will be a more vis­i­ble po­lice pres­ence in the cap­i­tal, “so when vis­i­tors and oth­ers tra­verse the city, they will get a feel­ing of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in the com­ing days.

“In terms of our se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments, we have col­lab­o­rat­ed with oth­er agen­cies, es­pe­cial­ly the po­lice ser­vice, and we have im­ple­ment­ed a strong and strin­gent se­cu­ri­ty plan that will en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of all vis­i­tors dur­ing the cruise-ship sea­son, which will roll over in­to Christ­mas and Car­ni­val,” said Charles.

On Tues­day, the Seabourn Ven­ture of the Seabourn cruise line made its in­au­gur­al vis­it to Port of Spain with 238 crew mem­bers and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 237 pas­sen­gers from 15 coun­tries.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell said the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to work with all the in­dus­try stake­hold­ers to en­hance T&T's po­si­tion as a pre­mier cruise des­ti­na­tion.

Mitchell said the cur­rent cruise sea­son fol­lows a very suc­cess­ful last sea­son, with his min­istry es­ti­mat­ing that cruise vis­i­tors spent $4.4 mil­lion with an av­er­age vis­i­tor spend of $56 per pas­sen­ger.

“Over $3 mil­lion was paid in port dues and oth­er fees by each of the cruise ships call­ing at our shores. Thus far, we ex­pect 102,000 pas­sen­gers to ar­rive at our shores here at the port of Port of Spain and the ports in Scar­bor­ough and Char­lottesville with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 62 cruise ships call­ing this sea­son. These pas­sen­gers have al­ready booked to go on shore ex­cur­sions and pre-pack­aged tours to the Mara­cas Wa­ter­fall, Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre, Paramin, city tours, our Mount St. Bene­dict tour, vis­its to the House of An­gos­tu­ra, and many oth­er tours,” he high­light­ed.

In a news re­lease on Tues­day, the Min­istry of Tourism said Trinidad will wel­come over 20 calls from 11 cruise lines in­clud­ing six in­au­gur­al vis­its dur­ing the 2024/2025 cruise sea­son, which runs from Oc­to­ber 2024 to April 2025.

It de­tailed that pas­sen­gers could look for­ward to a mul­ti­tude of ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing the cruise sea­son, as the des­ti­na­tion’s Christ­mas and Car­ni­val events will pro­vide var­i­ous on-shore op­tions in ad­di­tion to the pop­u­lar pre-booked tours.

Al­so, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (in­ter­im) of Tourism Trinidad Ltd (TTL) Cor­nell Buck­radee, of­fi­cial­ly wel­comed pas­sen­gers and crew mem­bers to the des­ti­na­tion dur­ing the cus­tom­ary crest ex­change which is held to sig­ni­fy a ship's in­au­gur­al vis­it.

Buck­radee ex­changed crests with Mas­ter of the Seabourn Ven­ture, Cap­tain Jeroen Schuch­man, and was treat­ed to a guid­ed tour of the ves­sel along­side Port Au­thor­i­ty and oth­er of­fi­cials.