St. Kitts & Nevis’ Tourism Minister Hails RCCL for Deploying Ship in Southern Caribbean

St. Kitts and Nevis’ Minister of Tourism and International Transport, Sen. the Hon. Richard Skerritt delivered good news to the island’s tourism stakeholders in the National Assembly on Thursday.

“In spite of the intense competition from global ports, and after months of relentless lobbying, it was therefore with great pleasure that we learnt last week that Royal Caribbean Cruise Line has decided to return to summer cruising in our region. They have decided to redeploy the Jewel of the Seas to the Caribbean from May to October 2013 to offer 25 sailings out of San Juan, Puerto Rico. This decision will result in 16 additional calls to Port Zante during the summer of 2013, bringing over 33,800 guests,” he told Parliament and the Nation. Jewel of the Seas made one call to St. Kitts' Port Zante during the 2011/2012 cruise ship season.

Minister Skerritt thanked Royal Caribbean Cruise Line for responding positively to once again offer year-round cruise options in the sub-region from next year.

“Jewel of the Seas will operate with three Southern Caribbean itineraries in the summer and autumn, and two itineraries in the winter and spring 2013-14 seasons. Departing every Saturday, the seven-night, round-trip itineraries include calls at a range of exciting ports throughout our sub-region, including St. Lucia, St. Kitts, Antigua, and the U.S.V.I., as well as St. Maarten, Barbados, Aruba and Curacao,” he said.

Mr. Skerritt also disclosed that Royal Caribbean’s Adventure of the Seas returns for the winter 2013-14 season to bolster Royal Caribbean’s offerings from San Juan, alternating two seven-night Southern Caribbean itineraries.

“On one itinerary, guests call at St. Thomas, St. Kitts, Aruba and Curacao, while the second calls at Barbados, St. Lucia, Antigua, St. Maarten and St. Croix,” he said.

He earlier pointed out that three years ago, St. Kitts welcomed the first summer ship from carnival cruise lines in 2008 and continued to schedule this weekly ship year-round to Port Zante.

He disclosed that as Chairman of the Caribbean Tourism Organization, he arranged meetings last year between Eastern Caribbean Tourism Ministers and representatives of the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association and followed up with his own one-on-one meetings in January this year with key decision-makers in the cruise industry to lobby for business in general, and to explore ways to entice cruise lines to bring back summer ships to the Caribbean and to grow cruise arrivals in the Eastern Caribbean, where growth in arrivals overall has trickled almost to a halt.

He pointed out said over the past year it had become clear to me that new Global cruise deployment focus had shifted away from the Caribbean for 2012-2013. Strategic deployment decisions taken by the lines, based on market expectations in 2010, are now being implemented.

Back in 2010 the major lines saw fall off in demand for the Eastern Caribbean and new opportunity in Australia, Asia, South America, and Europe (Baltic and Western Med). Even Alaska is having better sales than previously. This situation is compounded by the fact that no new ship build tonnage is slated for deployment in the Caribbean before 2014 while, as I said, some existing ships are being removed to other markets.

Another significant reason for the weak summer deployment and slow growth overall in this part of the Caribbean is that high fuel costs continue to force ships to sail more slowly over shorter distances in order to achieve optimum efficiencies. The result is that destination ports in the south-eastern Caribbean, which are further away from a home port, are suffering a loss of business. The increased cost of air travel has also rendered sub-regional home-ports like San Juan and Bridgetown less attractive to cruise lines and less tonnage is now being based there.

The tourism minister pointed out that the global recession has changed the face of tourism markets everywhere to become extremely personalized, customer focused and value-added.

He noted that in spite of the ongoing challenges and various setbacks involved in market recovery for all types of Caribbean tourism, this good news is evidence that St. Kitts and the Caribbean region continues to show tremendous growth potential during this recovery period, and I can say with confidence that our tourism future is promising.