Trinidad wel­comed its largest cruise ship to date ear­li­er to­day when the MSC Seashore made its in­au­gur­al vis­it to Port of Spain with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,500 pas­sen­gers on board.

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell, of­fi­cial­ly wel­comed pas­sen­gers and crew mem­bers to the is­land dur­ing a Crest Ex­change that was held on board the ves­sel.

The ship’s Mas­ter, Cap­tain Di­no Sagani, ex­changed plaques with Min­is­ter Mitchell - as is cus­tom­ary dur­ing a ship's in­au­gur­al vis­it to a coun­try - which was fol­lowed by a tour of the ves­sel.

In a state­ment fol­low­ing the ex­change, Min­is­ter Mitchell said that the ar­rival of the MSC Seashore and all oth­er cruise ships pro­vid­ed mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment for lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs with­in the tourism sec­tor. He al­lud­ed to the over­whelm­ing re­quest for tours by pas­sen­gers from the ship to­day and op­por­tu­ni­ties for tour op­er­a­tors and taxi dri­vers.

Min­is­ter Mitchell said that the gov­ern­ment was look­ing at fa­cil­i­tat­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in oth­er ar­eas that can be ben­e­fi­cial across sec­tors.

He said that strides were be­ing made with re­spect to cli­mate change ini­tia­tives and point­ed to last Wednes­day’s nam­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the Ste­na Pro Pa­tria, the first low-emis­sion methanol fu­elled ship in the Pro­man fleet.

“There are al­ready fixed con­tracts for the sup­ply of en­er­gy. We ex­pect to have some vir­tu­al meet­ings with the fu­el pro­cure­ment of­fi­cers at the MSC, Roy­al Caribbean and oth­er cruise ships to see how best we can sup­ply them, through Pro­man, with methanol in the fu­ture. We are link­ing not just the fu­el bunker­ing, but we are work­ing with the cruise lines to en­sure that we can pro­vide the en­er­gy, labour and some of the man­u­fac­tured goods to these cruise lines,” he said.

Ship Mas­ter, Cap­tain Di­no Sagani, was in­trigued by the de­vel­op­ment of the is­land, not­ing that the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel was not yet built when he last sailed to Trinidad. He added that to­day’s in­au­gur­al vis­it went “per­fect­ly” and shared that MSC Cruis­es was ex­pand­ing its op­er­a­tions, which rep­re­sents the pos­si­bil­i­ty for ex­pand­ing the re­la­tion­ship with the des­ti­na­tion.

Al­so present on to­day’s tour were Dr. Maryam Ab­dool-Richards, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer (Ag) in the Min­istry of Health; Ms. Si­mone Thorne-Mo­ra Quinones, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts; Mr. Cliff Hamil­ton, Chair­man of Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed (TTL); Ms. Car­la Cu­pid, In­ter­im Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed; and Mr. Charles Car­val­ho, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Car­val­ho’s Agen­cies.

Dis­em­bark­ing pas­sen­gers were greet­ed with live parang, ca­lyp­so and steel­pan mu­sic, and were al­so giv­en a glimpse of the of­fer­ings in Des­ti­na­tion Trinidad’s Well­ness Tourism niche.

The one-day ex­hi­bi­tion, held at the Cruise Ship Com­plex, was host­ed by Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed in cel­e­bra­tion of Caribbean Tourism Month in align­ment with the month’s theme “Well­ness”. Pas­sen­gers were in­tro­duced to sam­ples of food and bev­er­ages by lo­cal ex­hibitors who al­so shared the health ben­e­fits as­so­ci­at­ed with their prod­ucts and ser­vices.

The ex­hi­bi­tion marked the end of Caribbean Tourism Month cel­e­bra­tions in Trinidad which is ob­served an­nu­al­ly in No­vem­ber.