The 2022-2023 cruise ship sea­son fell well short of the num­ber of tourists from these ves­sels that T&T saw be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, while the sea­son may not have lived up to the lev­els pre­vi­ous­ly seen by this coun­try, the Min­istry of Tourism is ex­pect­ing to build up­on the re­turn of cruise ships to these shores fol­low­ing the first full sea­son since the on­set of the virus.

For the past six months, it has be­come a com­mon sight for most work­ing or tra­vers­ing Port-of-Spain to no­tice tourists walk­ing the City with the Cruise Ship peek­ing over Wright­son Road.

The Rhap­sody of Seas be­came the last cruise ship to dock in Trinidad for the sea­son on April 18, 2023.

Up to that point just un­der 50,000 cruise ship pas­sen­gers had come to vis­it the is­land, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Min­istry of Tourism.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that ac­cord­ing to da­ta tab­u­lat­ed up to April 11, a week be­fore the Rhap­sody’s ar­rival, just un­der 70,000 cruise ship pas­sen­gers had vis­it­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go for the sea­son.

“To date, there have been 28 calls at the Cruise Ship Com­plex, Port of Spain, with the to­tal num­ber of pas­sen­gers to­talling 45,981 and to­tal num­ber of crew to­talling 20,130. Of the to­tal num­ber of pas­sen­gers, 28,065 or 80 per cent (es­ti­mat­ed) dis­em­barked. Of this num­ber, 9,975 pas­sen­gers or 38 per cent went on a shore ex­cur­sion (pre-paid tours),” the Min­is­ter stat­ed in a doc­u­ment sent to the Busi­ness Guardian.

“This sea­son, Trinidad wel­comed the ar­rival of the largest ship of the cruise sea­son, the MSC Seashore on No­vem­ber 30, 2022, which had an oc­cu­pan­cy of 3,186 pas­sen­gers and 1,492 crew mem­bers. There is one more call on April 18th to con­clude the sea­son from the Roy­al Caribbean cruise line, Rhap­sody of the Seas, which will make the most cruise calls this sea­son (18 of the 28 cruise calls for the sea­son).”

T&T’s Cruise Ship Passenger Arrival numbers from 2017 to 2023.

Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts and the Immigration Division

These num­bers un­sur­pris­ing­ly rep­re­sent­ed an im­prove­ment on the cur­tailed 2020 sea­son which saw a to­tal of 45,580 pas­sen­gers com­ing to this coun­try, but it still was sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than the last cruise ship sea­son be­fore the pan­dem­ic put the in­dus­try on hia­tus.

No­tably, the Min­is­ter point­ed out that T&Ts cruise ship pas­sen­ger ar­rivals had been on the de­cline pri­or to COVID-19’s im­pact.

Min­is­ter Mitchell said, “Cruise pas­sen­ger ar­rivals to T&T in­creased from 70,094 in 2017 to 125,603 in 2018, the high­est record­ed for the sev­en-year pe­ri­od un­der re­view.

“In 2019, the num­ber of cruise vis­i­tors to the des­ti­na­tion wit­nessed a con­sis­tent de­cline, reach­ing 45,580 in 2020, which was the be­gin­ning of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, the cruise sea­son was cur­tailed with on­ly ten ships call­ing at the des­ti­na­tion in that year. There was no cruise sea­son in 2021 due to the clo­sure of the Trinidad and To­ba­go bor­ders and in 2022, the sea­son re-start­ed in No­vem­ber with the lift­ing of bor­der re­stric­tions. In the cur­rent cruise sea­son (2022/2023), the num­ber of pas­sen­gers that have vis­it­ed the des­ti­na­tion is 68,916 which is low­er than the 2019 fig­ure of 91,423. It must be not­ed how­ev­er that the fi­nal pas­sen­ger count will in­crease when all the da­ta is tal­lied at the end of the sea­son.”

De­spite the low­er num­bers seen this year, the min­is­ter con­firmed that sig­nif­i­cant em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties were cre­at­ed as a re­sult of the sea­son. The Min­is­ter said da­ta was still be­ing col­lat­ed con­cern­ing the over­all im­pact of the sea­son, while there were still out­stand­ing num­bers from To­ba­go for March and April.

He said, “The cruise sec­tor gen­er­ates em­ploy­ment in sev­er­al ar­eas, in­clud­ing taxi/maxi taxi ser­vices, craft work­ers, tour op­er­a­tors, vis­i­tor am­bas­sadors, tour guides, en­ter­tain­ers, and the like. In terms of tour guides, Car­val­ho’s Agen­cies em­ploys a cadre of 35 tour guides in both Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­de­pen­dent of the tour guides that op­er­ate at the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary and oth­er at­trac­tions. Dur­ing the sea­son, Tourism Trinidad Ltd al­so em­ployed 34 Vis­i­tor Am­bas­sadors who are de­ployed through­out the City of Port-of-Spain to as­sist vis­i­tors and 12 da­ta col­lec­tors/enu­mer­a­tors to con­duct sur­veys with both crew and pas­sen­gers.”

A post from Tourism Trinidad on the final day of Cruise Ship Season

Tourism Trinidad

The Min­istry was un­able to give Sun­day Busi­ness a de­fin­i­tive tal­ly con­cern­ing the amount of for­eign ex­change rev­enue gen­er­at­ed by the sea­son, but he stat­ed that every ship would have con­tributed rev­enue through var­i­ous chan­nels.

“In terms of for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion, these ves­sels re­mit fees to the Port of Port-of-Spain in US dol­lars for every call made to the des­ti­na­tion. For ex­am­ple, the re­cent vis­it by the Rhap­sody of the Seas through a char­ter­er gen­er­at­ed US$45,000 in rev­enue for the Gov­ern­ment cof­fers. These fees in­clude head tax, port fees, berthing fees, and pi­lot charges,” said the Min­is­ter.

One of the cruise ships which docked dur­ing the sea­son was the EPIC Car­ni­val Cruise, which ac­cord­ing to its or­gan­is­ers, brought al­most US$3 mil­lion in rev­enue to T&T.

The Min­is­ter said he ex­pect­ed the 2023-2024 sea­son would see an in­crease in cruise ac­tiv­i­ty for Trinidad as he stat­ed he ex­pect­ed 39 port calls with an es­ti­mat­ed 86,000 pas­sen­gers ex­pect­ed based on the cur­rent min­i­mum fore­cast.

He said, “Giv­en this in­crease, we are putting all in place to im­prove the tours and shore ex­cur­sions and the lev­els of cus­tomer ser­vice de­liv­ered to cruise pas­sen­gers.”

On the last day of the cruise ship sea­son, Tourism Trinidad post­ed a sta­tis­ti­cal round-up of the sea­son, where it stat­ed that there were in to­tal 48,243 pas­sen­gers who vis­it­ed the is­land.

This spanned 111 unique coun­tries of ori­gin, the post stat­ed.

Just un­der a quar­ter of these pas­sen­gers, 10,358 to be ex­act, pre-booked tours for their ar­rival in Trinidad.

Mara­cas Beach and Mar­cas Wa­ter­fall, Mount St Bene­dict and the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary proved to be the most vis­it­ed places by vis­it­ing pas­sen­gers, while many al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see the ma­jor sites in Port-of-Spain.

Tourism Trinidad con­firmed that most vis­i­tors came from the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca with 14,445 vis­i­tors, fol­lowed by the Unit­ed King­dom with 9,483 with our Caribbean neigh­bour Bar­ba­dos be­ing the third high­est coun­try of ori­gin with 8,779 pas­sen­gers.

Cana­da with 5,596 and Brazil with 2,436 were the fourth and fifth most com­mon vis­i­tors to our shores via a cruise ship dur­ing the sea­son.