Norwegian Cruise returns to Ocho Rios
Published:Wednesday | September 14, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Marcella Scarlett, Business Reporter
After six years of absence, Norwegian Cruise Line has put Jamaica back on its itinerary.
The first ship call, scheduled for October at the Ocho Rios pier, will follow pending visits by Norwegian Cruise executives this month to evaluate facilities at the port.
The review will not affect calls scheduled for the 2011-12 cruise season from the Norwegian Pearl and Norwegian Sun, but will determine whether the Norway-based operation will continue to feed business to Jamaica beyond 2012.
Kumar Sujanani, president of the St Ann Chamber of Commerce, told a Gleaner Editors' Forum Monday that Norwegian Cruise Line was a once frequent visitor to Ocho Rios, but stopped calling in 2005.
Scheduled to dock
They have now scheduled 34 calls to Ocho Rios for 2011-12, booked through Lannaman & Morris Shipping Company. The Norwegian Pearl is scheduled to dock on October 19 on the first call.
Each call is expected to bring up to 2,000 passengers, or 68,000 passengers for the season, a representative from Lannaman and Morris told Wednesday Business.
"They are money ships; they (represent) good spending," said Sue Morris. "They are the types of ships that need to be attracted back into Ocho Rios."
The reintroduction of the Norwegian Cruise line at the piers in Ocho Rios will pick up the slack left by Royal Caribbean Cruise, which abandoned Ocho Rios in favour of Falmouth. Royal Caribbean is a financial investor in the nascent Falmouth port in neighbouring parish Trelawny.
Carnival Cruise Line, which operates all year long, also continues to feed business to Ocho Rios. In August, Carnival pledged 1.2 million visitors to Ocho Rios and Montego Bay over three years, starting in 2011, under a deal struck with the Jamaican Government.
Sujanani said Norwegian Cruise will weigh the outcome of the 2011-12 season before making decisions about 2012-13.
Relationship lifespan
Morris added that the lifespan of the relationship will be determined by Norwegian Cruise's satisfaction.
"Port Authority is trying to bring in the business. It is now up to the business community for the parish of St Ann to allow the port Authority to do its job and sell the port of Ocho Rios," she said.
"Ocho Rios is a difficult sell for the Port Authority because of all the complaints from the tourists."
Poor aesthetics and visitor harassment are recurring themes in the complaints.
"The problems were always there; but when there is less business the problems seem more obvious and the people seem more desperate," Morris said.
"So this is brand new business that is contingent upon the satisfaction they are going to experience. And this is why the number one complaint at our ports on the vessel must be addressed — and that is tourist harassment - or else it is going to be the same old same old, and we may say that we have been doing enough, we have improved enough, but for the cruise line it is not satisfactory, and that is what we need to go by," she said.