Good year expected in cruise tourism

Valletta Cruise Port’s target of half a million passengers a year is set to be “exceeded substantially” in 2011, according to chairman Anton Micallef.

He was speaking after the release of figures showing that 78,250 cruise passengers visited Malta last month – a full 50 per cent more than in the same month last year.

The year was off to a slow start in terms of cruise numbers, attributed in part to a late Easter, but the past two months have made up for the rest. They have helped push the figure of arrivals for the first seven months up by nine per cent over the same period last year, from 225,676 to 279,910.

Dr Micallef yesterday took the Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism, Culture and the Environment, Mario de Marco on a tour of the Waterfront.

Dr de Marco described Valletta Cruise Port as a “success story of cooperation between the port, the government and the regulator”.

He said tourism in Malta was still strong, despite the unrest in North Africa which had led to the cancellation of some conferences between February and April due to the perceived danger.

“We got the message out there that Malta was still safe,” he said.

Meanwhile, the port is fine-tuning its facilities to cater for more ships. Part of the quay at Lascaris Wharf has been chopped off – at a cost of €500,000 – to allow for vessels of over 250 metres to berth. The area is being dredged to 10.5 metres from an average of seven metres to accommodate the big ships.

The first cruise ship to berth there, the Celebrity Solstice, was in fact 330 metres long and recent trends show that cruise liners, already behemoths, are set to keep growing so that they will easily carry 4,000 passengers.

Transport Malta CEO Stanley Portelli said the authority was investing in infrastructure to facilitate industry around the port. This includes €26 million spent on the Deep Water Quay, €500,000 on each of Lascaris and Boiler wharves and €1 million to restore the Grand Harbour breakwater.