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Over the last decade, the number of cruise ships calling at Dublin Port has doubled and will reach about 190 this year, mainly visiting for short periods in the summer months.
Dublin is by far the most popular port of call in Ireland, but Belfast, Cork and other ports attract cruise ships too. Dublin is about to embark on a major expansion of capacity for its bread-and-butter freight business and construction work will reduce available jetty space over the next few years.
Since cruise ships account for just 2.5% of Dublin’s revenue, the port company has announced that it will cater for only about half the recent number of cruise ship visits for the next few years and will also incur costs of over €100m to provide long-term cruise capacity if growth can then resume from recent levels.
Ports outside Dublin have protested that the halving of cruise capacity at Dublin, even for a few years, will hurt their arrivals, since operators might decide to cut Ireland from their itineraries altogether if the most valued destination is not available. The port company has also made it clear that it does not attach a high priority to shelling out over €100m for cruise ship capacity when the business currently brings in not much over €2m per annum in berthage and other fees. It is willing to accommodate the business but not to pick up the tab, or certainly not all of it.
Cruise visitors generate more publicity than they do serious tourism revenue. There is no extra business for hotels since the visitors sleep on board. Extra business is mainly for retailers in the city and opposition to the planned curtailment has been led by souvenir shops among others.
Second thoughts
Around Europe, the recent explosive growth in the cruise business is beginning to generate second thoughts and tourism promotion bodies have become less enthusiastic. The city of Venice, the ultimate victim of “over-tourism”, is contemplating the complete removal of cruise liners and several Mediterranean ports are of the same mind.
Dubrovnik, the “Pearl of the Adriatic”, is planning to restrict numbers to just two arrivals per day. I spent a year teaching at the university there some years back and the old walled city was already over-run on the days when there were several arrivals. In the last few years, visitors must queue for tickets to enter the walled city at all on busy days and the permanent residents are not amused.
The souvenir shops in Dubrovnik lost interest in cruise visitors a long time ago – the ships disgorged their potential customers on to the streets of the town already togged out in “Pearl of the Adriatic” T-shirts purchased on board.
A full range of tat of all descriptions, including local “craft” items made in Cambodia, is also on offer – the business model of the cruise companies is to make sure that as little money as possible leaks into the local economy.
Dublin retailers have been citing the spin-off benefit of the cruise business and there are doubtless a few other beneficiaries, people organising short tours to Glendalough and the like, but they are not offering to come up with the €100m and it is fair to ask whether the freight business at Dublin should play second fiddle. The port company clearly is not enthusiastic.
Promoters of cruise traffic are keen to quote figures for the number of visitors delivered, and the total at Dublin has recently been around 200,000, which sounds impressive. But they do not mention bed-nights, the key metric for the national tourism industry, since the figure is zero.
The total annual number of visitors to Dublin is over six million, so the cruise figure is just not material. The port company has launched a public consultation and has briefed Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Shane Ross. Since there is no chance of retailers or people running tours to Wicklow volunteering €100m or any portion of it, the minister will be under pressure to pony up some slice of the capital cost.
Fees
The sensible course is surely to let the port company see what level of fees the cruise companies are willing to pay in future years and to invest whatever makes commercial sense.
Their business is welcome but it is hardly a legitimate call on the State’s capital budget, or on the port company’s balance sheet, to finance heavy investment in exchange for a boost to retail turnover in a small number of outlets.
They are not finding the same welcome around Europe and are already facing higher charges, or quotas for the number of visits, in many other ports.
If they are not prepared to meet the costs of whatever capital spending they require, the national exchequer, like Dublin Port, has other priorities.
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