Up­wards of US$1.4 mil­lion has been in­ject­ed by cruise ship pas­sen­ger ar­rivals for 2023.

This was re­vealed by the Tourism Min­istry on Wednes­day in a news re­lease.

It said in a May 2023 ‘Sur­vey Re­port of Cruise Vis­i­tors to Trinidad’ pre­pared by Tourism Trinidad Ltd (TTL), cruise ship vis­i­tors spent on av­er­age ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$50 and crew mem­bers US$ 26 per vis­it.

“By these es­ti­mates, the mon­ey in­ject­ed in­to the econ­o­my thus far is up­wards of US$1.4 mil­lion. This fig­ure is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue to grow as we wel­come 22 more cruise calls to the Port-of-Port of Spain for the sea­son.”

The min­istry said vis­i­tors en­joyed pre-pack­aged tours to key tourist at­trac­tions such as the Mara­cas wa­ter­falls, a city tour, and then to Mara­cas beach or Mt St Bene­dict, kayak­ing on the Ca­roni Riv­er and a Paramin 4x4 ad­ven­ture.

It not­ed that a to­tal of 21 maxi taxis trans­port­ed vis­i­tors to the var­i­ous sites that show­case the is­land’s his­to­ry and nat­ur­al beau­ty.

In terms of ar­rival, 28,000 vis­i­tors have come to Port of Port of Spain since 2023/2024 Cruise Sea­son be­gan.

Des­ti­na­tion Trinidad not­ed 2,600 pas­sen­gers ar­rived on the Jew­el of the Seas, while the MSC Sea­side’s in­au­gur­al vis­it to Trinidad last Thurs­day, brought 4,234 pas­sen­gers, the largest group to Trinidad’s shores for the cur­rent cruise sea­son.

Some 48,243 pas­sen­gers ar­rived via 29 cruise ship calls in the 2022/2023 cruise ship sea­son.

Based on the ear­ly num­bers, the vis­i­tors are on pace to sur­pass the 2019/2020 vis­i­tor num­bers as 88,000 vis­i­tors are ex­pect­ed through­out the sea­son

Min­ster Ran­dall Mitchell said he is “pleased with the in­crease in cruise calls as a re­sult of our strate­gic des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing. Vis­i­tor ar­rivals will not on­ly pro­vide eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to the is­land but the op­por­tu­ni­ty for cul­tur­al ex­changes be­tween the vis­i­tors and our cit­i­zens as well.”