An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Over 21,000 pas­sen­gers have vis­it­ed Trinidad on cruise ships so far for the 2023/24 sea­son, which rep­re­sents an es­ti­mat­ed 81 per cent in­crease in pas­sen­ger ar­rivals com­pared to last sea­son.

Pro­vid­ing that in­for­ma­tion yes­ter­day was CEO of Trinidad Tourism Ltd, Car­la Cu­pid, who told the me­dia that the num­ber of cruise-ship ar­rivals is very en­cour­ag­ing.

She was speak­ing at a news brief­ing at the Cruise Ship Com­plex, short­ly af­ter the MSC Sea­side cruise lin­er docked in Port-of-Spain.

Over 4,000 pas­sen­gers dis­em­barked from the cruise ship to go on var­i­ous tours around the coun­try.

The pas­sen­gers were greet­ed with the danc­ing of Moko Jumbies and peo­ple play­ing the na­tion­al steel pan.

“Of course, we have Jew­el of the Seas, the Roy­al Caribbean ves­sel that calls every Tues­day and they bring about 2,400, 2,500 pas­sen­gers. What is good about this year...is that all the ves­sels are com­ing al­most to ca­pac­i­ty, so I think that is good for the in­ter­est be­ing gen­er­at­ed.”

She said that the MSC is the largest ves­sel to dock to date.

Cu­pid not­ed that the in­flux of pas­sen­gers vis­it­ing Trinidad gen­er­ates for­eign ex­change for the coun­try.

“With our for­eign ex­change, be­cause when they en­gage taxi dri­vers, they go down­town and en­gage in shop­ping, and we do guide them to these places. So they do pay in US and eu­ros which is the pre­dom­i­nant cur­ren­cy, so, yes, that helps,” the tourism ex­ec­u­tive high­light­ed.

Asked how many cruise lines have vis­it­ed since the 2023-2024 sea­son, Cu­pid said sev­en new lines vis­it­ed.

“Over time, we would have gone to con­fer­ences like the Flori­da Caribbean Cruise As­so­ci­a­tion Con­fer­ence, Sea Trade, where we meet with cruise line ex­ec­u­tives, on the op­tion of com­ing to Port-of-Spain, as a port of call. TTL would have done some train­ing with tourism stake­hold­ers, to im­prove the ser­vice de­liv­ery, par­tic­u­lar­ly to cruise pas­sen­gers. I be­lieve all of those ef­forts would have now trans­lat­ed to more port calls and new lines com­ing on board as well,” she men­tioned.

Cu­pid al­so said that four T&T na­tion­als took up jobs yes­ter­day, with MSC Sea­side fol­low­ing the re­cruit­ment ex­er­cise, which was done by the Min­istry of Tourism and the Port Agent.

She not­ed of the four, two of them would be work­ing on a cruise ship for the first time.

Adri­an Ram­per­sad, who is one of the four peo­ple tak­ing up the job said he was ex­cit­ed and look­ing for­ward to this.

“This is the op­por­tu­ni­ty of a life­time, so I am look­ing for­ward to it. This is my first post aboard a cruise ship.”

An­oth­er re­cruit, Ronald Hunte, who worked on the Roy­al Caribbean Cruise line said it is a nice ex­pe­ri­ence go­ing all over the world and meet­ing new peo­ple on dif­fer­ent port calls.

He en­cour­aged na­tion­als to ap­ply.

Sev­er­al tourists told Guardian Me­dia that it was their first time in this coun­try and were ex­cit­ed to see what it had to of­fer.