Cruise Europe attends Seatrade Global in numbers

Cruise Europe’s annual Monday evening reception is now firmly entrenched in the Seatrade Global calendar. About 350 guests attended including 50 or so cruiseline executives and 10 press. The ports of Gdansk and Gdynia co-hosted the event which took place on a yacht docked at the Hilton Marina.

The 110m2 exhibition stand commanded a central position with many members using it as a meeting point with cruiselines. In 2018 almost double the footprint has been secured in order to accommodate more visitors and to make CE even more visible. CE chairman Michael McCarthy, managing director Jens Skrede and consultant Nigel Lingard were on hand every day to share information and spread the CE word.

As far as the conference and workshops were concerned McCarthy, spoke for many, when he said that the cost of $1,000-1,2000 attending the conference and workshops was poor in relation to the content offered.

Although the ‘State of the Industry’ was very well attended, there was little new to be learned from the topics raised except by newcomers to the industry. Whilst hearing that all the world markets are under-penetrated, Korea was one that was highlighted as a potential new source of passengers. The Chinese market, recently given so much attention as having huge potential, was compared to ‘a patient still in a stable condition in hospital’.

Alongside the quest for more passengers and newbuildings, with ships both larger and smaller than presently being built, over-tourism was high on the agenda including destination degradation.

Cruiselines were highlighted as being good partners but the conference content made it difficult for suppliers to really get a grasp on how they can work together on the challenging issues. McCarthy was particularly disappointed with the workshops which he felt were stage managed with very little of value to be learned regarding over-capacity and environmental issues as well as sustainable tourism. The idea of replacing the word ‘overcapacity’ with ‘adequate capacity’ did nothing to address the actual problem.

Speaking on behalf of many of the CE members, McCarthy highlighted the need for controversial issues to be addressed in order to make real and positive progress: "We are all very aware that it is difficult to address controversial issues in such an open forum so perhaps a different format is the answer.”

“A more closed workshop environment where we can actually benchmark best practice could be a solution. At the Cruise Europe Conference (CEC) in April, for example, we will ensure such issues are tabled for discussion and offer affected ports an opportunity to explain various mitigation measures.”

The CEC will take place in St Petersburg from April 24 to 26. The programme includes 16 speakers from within the industry. There will be 16 cruiseline executives attending, six international press and about 100 CE members.