ARTICLE

Cruise Tourism and the Destination; Reconciling Divergent Realities

July 24, 2017 – Christopher Visentin

For many port communities, large-scale cruise tourism plays an outsized role in the local economy. Impressively large cruise ships—some delivering more than four thousand five hundred tourists at a time—dominate waterfronts, skylines, and communities, from Greece to the Caribbean islands.

These numbers and their influence are hard to ignore. A 2013 Report produced for the International Symposium on Cruise Ships in Historic Port Communities warns that ports of call often overestimate the cruise industry’s benefits to their communities.

It also offers insight into the port community’s plight: even more dangerous than the overestimated benefits are the often-overlooked consequences of accommodating cruise liners.

Along with the money that passengers, crew, and ships bring to port, the Report notes that cruise tourism can negatively impact the local culture, the economy, and the environment. These consequences, if considered, might change a port community’s calculus when dealing with large cruise liners:

• The Report warns of “intense commodification” of local culture at the cost of cultural identity and heritage to accommodate cruise tourists, who might only be in port for a few hours.
• Cruise tourism damages the environment of ports and destinations. The Report cites data that shows the average cruise ship generates hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater and ballast water from foreign ports and air pollution created by the ships’ diesel engines.
• Cruise tourism also detracts from other forms of tourism. The Report notes that cruise tourism often thrives at the expense of overnight tourism.

When we factor in these cultural, environmental, and economical consequences outlined by the Report, cruise liners could be thriving at the expense of the port communities themselves in some cases.

Given cruise tourism’s huge presence in many destinations, communities are at a clear disadvantage: driving a hard bargain with these corporations is intimidating.

Communities that decide to act collectively to ensure they benefit from a more balanced approach won’t be the first to do so, and they won’t be alone. Nevertheless, they must expect serious push back from the cruise industry and community surrogates.

In Venice, community groups and protesters are speaking out against the 600-plus cruise ships that visit the ancient, canaled city each year. Santorini is capping the yearly number of cruise passengers that can disembark on the island.

Even if an imbalance between the costs and benefits of cruise tourism exists, the solution is not so simple as capping cruise tourism or banning it altogether, as these case studies and the Report itself illustrate.

How, then, does a small community re-calibrate its response to tourism, and how does it accurately evaluate cruise tourism in context?

The Report has an answer for that too: in order to know the next step in re-calibrating a relationship with the cruise industry, it suggests that port communities calculate the true value of cruise tourism to the community, and take into account the drawbacks that come with that value and that are specific to each community.

The Report urges communities to develop their own numbers through targeted surveys and perform the requisite analysis. Data from the cruise industry is statistically skewed and not necessarily representative of the economic benefit communities can expect: travel writer Doug Lansky notes that much of cruise industry data comes from optional surveys left in passenger’s rooms. Suffice it to say, to quote Lansky, “it’s not terribly scientific”.

Clearly, the community as a whole needs to be involved in calibrating the tourism  sector’s benefits to cultural, environmental, and economic needs. This means communicating and collaborating closely in order to achieve a consensus for change. This is how communities can be sure that all interests are appropriately balanced.