An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

T&T wel­comed its sec­ond cruise ship vis­it for the sea­son yes­ter­day when the En­chant­ed Princess docked with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,660 pas­sen­gers, main­ly from North Amer­i­ca on its in­au­gur­al vis­it to this coun­try.

The ship has 17 floors and dif­fer­ent en­ter­tain­ment ac­tiv­i­ties to keep the pas­sen­gers en­gaged through­out the cruise.

Cap­tain Mario Ciruzzi said the ves­sel’s sis­ter ship, the Ma­jes­tic Princess, is ex­pect­ed to vis­it T&T on Jan­u­ary 29 and the Hanseat­ic Na­ture on April 20.

“En­chant­ed Princess will be back as we look at mak­ing your pro­to­col part of our des­ti­na­tion mov­ing for­ward,” he said.

Of­fi­cials of Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed (TTL) ex­changed the crest with crew from the En­chant­ed Princess sym­bol­iz­ing their part­ner­ship and com­mit­ment to mak­ing T&T a pre­mier cruise des­ti­na­tion.

Pas­sen­gers and crew on­board were treat­ed to live parang mu­sic by the Lara Broth­ers, of­fer­ing a taste of T&T’s vi­brant cul­tur­al her­itage.

TTL said in a state­ment that the aim was to “cap­ture and high­light the En­chant­ed Prinicess’s of­fer­ings, the grow­ing cruise tourism sec­tor, and the ap­peal of Trinidad’s at­trac­tions, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, and un­par­al­leled cul­ture.”

T&T is prepar­ing to wel­come 20 calls from 11 dif­fer­ent cruise lines. Oth­er ves­sels that have made in­au­gur­al vis­its thus far are Seabourn Ven­ture and MS Nau­ti­ca.

Last month, TTL’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Cor­nell Buck­radee, un­der­scored the tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ties the cruise sec­tor brings to lo­cal stake­hold­ers and the broad­er tourism land­scape.

“Every cruise call is a gate­way to eco­nom­ic growth, job cre­ation, and in­valu­able ex­po­sure for our lo­cal tour op­er­a­tors, ar­ti­sans, taxi dri­vers, and small busi­ness­es,” he said.

“These vis­i­tors are not just tourists; they have the po­ten­tial to be­come des­ti­na­tion am­bas­sadors for Trinidad, shar­ing their pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ences with their per­son­al and on­line net­works, which is vi­tal for build­ing our rep­u­ta­tion in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.”

The cruise sea­son be­gan on Oc­to­ber 8.