Moderator Luis de Carvalho, ceo, Bermello Ajamil & Partners Europe, kickstarted a three way discussion with port, city and cruise line representatives by asking: Is the silent majority blocked out by the loudest noise and how to reverse this?
‘How can all of us in the cruise sector bring the positives to the forefront and change some of the negative public opinion that the industry is facing in some destinations?’ he asked.
Overtourism debate in Dubrovnik
First to speak Jelka Tepsic, deputy mayor City of Dubrovnik where tourist arrivals have doubled between 2010 and 2017 to reach 1.8m last year.
‘Overtourism in our city is seasonal with 85% of all cruise and 90% of all airplane arrivals from May-November.’
She added, that in reality the biggest impact of overtourism is at the narrow hotspot at the entrance of the old town where over 10,000 people converged in August 2016.
On the overtourism debate in Dubrovnik, where cruise visitors only account for 5% of tourists, Tepsic admitted, ‘cruise ships are not the only troublemakers but large numbers of guests disembarking and embarking in a short time frame of around three hours has been causing concern in the last couple of years.’
Michel Nestour, vp global port & destination development Carnival Corp & plc said he was heartened when he met with Dubrovnik city officials on behalf of CLIA to try and find a working solution for 2018 and beyond.
‘The first thing the mayor said when we sat down is we want to welcome cruise tourists but we have to find better coordination and distribution of embarking/disembarking times,’ he recalled.
Limiting visitors at cultural hotspots
The city has worked on limiting the number of all visitors at cultural heritage hotspots and developing alternative visiting modes and excursion offers this year and according to the deputy mayor and the cruise lines represented on the panel (also Elisabetta de Nardo, vp port development at MSC Cruises), the measures have worked.
‘For example, instead of two MSC Cruises’ ships arriving at the same time in port one visits in the morning and the other in the afternoon,’ de Nardo said.
Emotional perception in the Balearics
Balearic Islands Port Authority president Joan Gual de Torrella spoke from his islands’ experience and the impact of ‘emotional perception’ by local residents who don’t understand the cruise business or the economic impact but simply see five or six ships in port in Palma de Majorca and the passengers pouring into the town.
De Nardo pointed to the fact that any growing business needs to anticipate the future and prepare for the next stage of evolution and she referenced work done by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council on creating sustainable destinations which includes a multi-year strategy and vision, continuous improvement and also seasonality management.
She also called for the cruise sector to have proactive engagement with the public including making videos with positive stories to share and making cruise more visible with the public.
Speaking on behalf of MedCruise which is studying how to assist members with port-city relations, BoD member Laura Cimaglia said the majority of MedCruise’s 70 members do not have issues regarding the cruise business impacting on destinations apart from the well documented places such as Venice, Dubrovnik, Livorno, La Spezia (Cinqueterre).
Facts versus perception
She asked, ‘is there a real concern about overtourism generated by cruise ships or is it about facts versus perception?’ and agreed with de Torrella, ‘it is often an emotive reaction but emotions can be changed through good communication,’ she countered.
Cimaglia cited, ‘often ports need to have the very detailed economic impact studies on the benefits of cruise tourism to get investment for new Infrastructure but for locals maybe the message they should be given is how many jobs does cruising create in your town, city or region.’
From the audience, Michael McCarthy, chairman of Cruise Europe said, ‘cruising is paying the price for visability’ and cited some practices that can spark negativity, ‘such as noise pollution from cruise ships making early morning arrival announcements on tannoys that can be heard loud and clear landside or music from top deck sail away parties do not help local’s perception.’
Challenging the vocabulary
Nestour feels that we all have to open our minds and better manage the messaging of the benefits of travel per se.
‘Cruise lines and destinations have a great opportunity to change the vocabulary we use from passengers to guests to help change any negativity from locals who view cruise ships negatively: ‘if you have a guest you welcome them.’
Ten solutions
In summing up the panelists and workshop audience agreed on and identified ten solutions to share:
- each destination should have a tourism management plan which includes cruise but also other tourist arrivals;
- ports should deal with berthing and operational matters and destinations deal with destination management and promotion aligned to tourist management plans;
- destinations, ports and cruise lines should have a communication plan that balances the noise by sharing good news inside, as well as outside, the cruise industry, to influence public opinion and perception and communicate directly with the local community;
- It is important for all stakeholders to manage emotions;
- each destination should have a tourism manager which understands cruise and can educate local stakeholders and community;
- each destination should engage on a sustainable tourism development plan shared by everybody - city, port, cruise lines and locals and economic impact needs to be felt and understood by the community in terms of job creation
- recommended changes of vocabulary from tourist/cruise passenger to guest;
- change vocabulary from tourism growth to tourism development to make local community feel part of a sustainable future for each destination;
- citing the example of Dubronvik, keep the solutions to overtourism simple, implement them and then share those solutions/best practices as other ports could benefit and
- finally, above all, happiness for everyone involved is the main goal.
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