A project for the construction of a modern cruise terminal has made significant headway. The Cuban port of Cienfuegos (center-south), the country’s second largest in terms of the volume of operations, will be the harbor of choice for this effort.

More than a million cruise ship passengers are expected to visit St. Kitts’ Port Zante, for the first time in history. This represents a 31.5 percent increase over the 2013/2014 season and a total growth over the past eight years of more than 500 percent. This season’s phenomenal is partly owed to Royal Caribbean.

Montego Bay’s Sangster International Airport (MBJ) is set to welcome nine additional weekly flights during the 2014-2015 cruise season, as UK-headquartered Thomson Cruises stations one of its four vessels at Montego Bay’s north coast port.

Panama’s Tourism Authority (ATP is the Spanish acronym) has announced that the new 2014-2015 cruise season is going to tee off in October, with the arrival of such vessels as the Monarch, Vision of the Seas, Grandeur of the Seas, Coral Princess and Regatta.

The announcement came from CEO of the Tourism Authority Colin C James and Cruise Association President Nathan Dundas who are attending the Seatrade Europe conference in Spain.

Belize received 527,037 cruise passengers in the first half of 2014, according to data released by the Caribbean Tourism Organization. That represented a 36.9 percent increase over the first six months of 2013, according to CTO data. The next-highest increase was that of Cozumel, which saw a 19.4 percent increase in the same period.