Italian cruise company MSC, one of the world´s leading companies of its kind, expects to reach 30 million euros in sales this year, a threefold jump from 2004, director-general Emiliano Gonzalez Delgado said this week. Revenues are supposed to triple because the number of passengers will climb from 12,000 last year to 35,000 this time around. The ongoing year could mark the takeoff of this maritime company that now owns seven liners, including four high-tech vessels.

Mexico´s Tourism Department (SECTUR) has stressed its commitment to strengthen services and products being offered to cruise passengers that swing by Puerto Vallarta by relying on the many commercial opportunities this lovely city has to offer. For Mexico, a country that ranks among the world´s top cruise destinations, this particular industry opens an enormous window of opportunity, said Oralia Rice, undersecretary of tourism planning at SECTUR.

Guatemala´s travel industry is anticipating a 2005-2006 cruise season with at least some 42 arrivals on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, up a double-digit increase from the previous season when 38 liners docked in with 50,393 passengers onboard. The decline sustained by the local cruise sector last year stemmed in part from a travel warning issued by U.S. authorities based on reports of rampant crime and insecurity in the Central American country. As a result of this action, three cruises called off their voyages to Guatemala.

Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of EasyJet, the European low-cost air carrier, has just launched EasyCruise, the latest venture from his serial company. EasyCruise is sailing along the French and Italian rivieras and is designed for independently minded people in their 20´s, 30´s and 40´s. This is a very different profile from the typical cruise passenger but already 75 percent of people who have booked with EasyCruise are aged between 18 and 40, with an average age of 35. So far, passengers of 42 different nationalities have booked cruises.

The St. Vincent and the Grenadines Port Authority will later this month sign a twinning agreement with Miami, that will allow the island to access the databases of cruise lines and communicate directly with the cruise ship operators, Tourism Minister Rene Baptiste has said. The agreement will be signed in the framework of a three-day meeting of Caribbean shipping executives that gets underway Kingstown on May 23.

The Fuerte Amador Cruise Terminal, right at the exit of the Panama Canal in the Pacific Ocean, has so far this year welcomed 152,287 visitors since the first liner docked in there back on October 2001. The attractions of this lovely Panamanian area include the islands of Perlas and Coiba, both in the Pacific. The latter –formerly used as a prison- is now penciled in as a great natural reserve packed with wonderful wildlife.