CLIA's Port & Destination Summit provides platform for exchanging ideas

Today's Summit included roundtable discussions, presentations, and concurrent sessions. It brought together 170 delegates from 30 countries, primarily representatives from port authorities, destinations, shore excursion operators, and port agents; as well as 30 senior cruise line executives.

Christine Duffy, CLIA’s president and ceo and Howard Frank, CLIA’s global chairman, gave keynote speeches focusing on the need for cruise lines, ports and destinations who face common challenges to continue working and growing together.

Duffy commented: 'The need to engage with the ports and destinations our ships visit is of crucial importance to us. Today’s Summit serves the industry well as a platform to foster high-level discussions on common opportunities and challenges while enhancing relationships between cruise lines, ports, destinations and service providers.'

Giora Israel, svp for global port and destination development at Carnival Corporation and chairman of CLIA’s Global Port & Destination Committee, said: 'The matters of greatest importance to cruise ports and destinations have been central to the agenda, seeking to further strengthen the key relationships between ports, destinations and cruise lines.'

Key topics discussed during the day included port infrastructure, destination development, and itinerary planning. Berth allocations and promoting the ports to cruise passengers were a couple of the issues that got a frank airing, according to Israel.

CLIA said it will repeat the Summit next year and look to expand the programme in others parts of the world.

It also stated it is evaluating its executive partner programme, including fee structure and associated benefits, going forward and will be announcing changes in late October.