MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Punta Arenas expects 30% drop in cruise 2009/2010 activity

Less cruise vessels, means the whole community looses.

The Maritime Chamber from Punta Arenas in the extreme south of Chile estimates that the number of visitors for the coming 2009/2010 cruise season could drop up to 30% which is equivalent to 29.000 people less.

Last season, 2008/09, the number of cruise visitors in Punta Arenas was estimated at 96.250 which compared to 2007/2008 represented a very modest increase, taking into account the growth rate begun in 2005/06 when 66.000 visitors came ashore.

“The forecast, based on declared bookings seems surprising given the fact that tourism reports from the advanced countries indicate that the cruise industry remains as an interesting, attractive vacation alternative, in spite of the world recession”, said Alejandro Riquelme Ducci president of the chamber.

But he also points out that if this is the case “it’s a double challenge for Punta Arenas, less visitors, and the urgent need to prune the excessive costs of operating vessels in our port facilities”.

Riquelme Ducci complained “there’s no official policy on the issue, locally or regionally, and it should be a priority to ensure that vessels are made to pay less fees for operating in Punta Arenas, and hopefully they will also contract more local labour”.

“We believe that the local port infrastructure has fallen back and the Ministry of Transport doesn’t even have somebody in charge of port issues where organizations can effectively inform the regional or national authorities about shortcomings so as to take the necessary decisions”, said Riquelme Ducci.

Jorge Norambuena, past president of Austro Chile was also critical of the situation. “The less cruise vessels to call at Punta Arenas or Natales mean fewer tourists, and this means less revenue for the government, for small enterprises, for artisans, for museums for restaurants, for the whole community. We will all loose”.

He said it was essential to make the port of Punta Arenas more attractive, “but unfortunately costs keep increasing, the company managing the port insists with charges, landing fees, parking fees, etc, all costs than add”.

To this situation must be added the conflict which bans foreign cruise vessels from calling at attractive tourism locations, “while Ushuaia, Argentina, continues increasing the number of calls” and “we know some cruises have cancelled Punta Arenas opting for Argentina”, added Norambuena.

Finally he complained that the marketing campaign to promote Chilean Patagonia remains mired in bureaucracy. “Promotion can’t be left to be done with one month of anticipation; it’s a twelve months activity”.

“For one reason or another we are concerned that we can’t go out to the world and show ourselves, reverting this situation and promoting as we had originally planned with the tourism authorities”, said Catalina Yasik member of the board from the Tourism Chamber Austro Chile.

“We need long term strategies to recover lost ground and we need the promotion package to be ready for launching at the latest in August”, insisted Ms Yasik.