GOA TOURISM WANTS TO PROMOTE "CRUISE TOURISM"

PANJIM: The Tourism Department is looking forward to promote Goa as hub of “cruise tourism” once the new cruise terminal at Mormugao Port Trust (MPT) becomes operational by December end.

In the last few years cruise liners calling at MPT have gone up, yet the Tourism Department restrained itself from promoting cruise tourism for want of proper cruise terminal.  However, this situation is likely to change in December when the new terminal is made operational.

Speaking to Herald Director of Tourism Swapnil Naik, said they had series of meetings with the Director General of Shipping as also MPT and the independent cruise terminal will be thrown open in December.  Currently, cruises calling at MPT use cargo terminal and it is not good situation due to coal dust pollution emanating from adjacent terminal.

“There were complaints in the past from cruise liners about coal dust pollution,” says the director, explaining why they did not go ahead with promotion of cruise tourism even as number of cruises calling at MPT increased.

Besides regular cruise liners, the department is also looking at recreation sorties of foreign navies as another lucrative option from tourism point of view.

“MPT receives a lot of enquiries from foreign navies,” he added.  In view of the increase in the number of cruise ship arrivals at MPT — Goa’s natural advantage in cruise tourism is clearly evident.

While in 1996-97 eighteen cruise vessels with total 3813 visited MPT; by 2006-2007 the number of cruise liners visiting Goa port crossed the seventy mark with total 8433 passengers.  According to the tourism director, benefits from cruise tourism are high as cruise liners carry passengers in big numbers.

Presently though, many cruise liners call at MPT, the State has not been able to benefit in a big way because passenger ships halt for a brief period.

“Cruises come in the morning and leave in the evening,” Naik pointed out, indicating that tourism industry will definitely benefit when new cruise terminal is commissioned.

It means passenger vessels will halt for a longer period. A large cruise vessel has carrying capacity anything between 1000 to 1500 passengers where as the capacity of smaller ones is anything between 500 to 1000 passengers.