
A record number of cruises are set to call at Gibraltar this year, representing an 11% increase on last year with an estimated 350,000 passengers from 227 visits. Some 18 cruise ships will make their first ever visits to Gibraltar with six of the brand new vessels selecting Gibraltar as part of their maiden season.

More than 250.000 passengers and crew members from cruise vessels visited Uruguay during the three months extending from November to January, according to the latest release from the country's Ministry of Tourism. The number of calls in Montevideo during that period was 58, with 156.100 people of which 112.400 (72%) came ashore.

Results from a new study examining 20 years of commercial cruise activity in the Antarctic Peninsula region have important implications for Antarctic visitor management. The paper was published online this week in the journal Antarctic Science, according to the latest release from IAATO.

Punta Arenas in the extreme south of Chile is encouraged by the cruise industry prospects for its port and facilities: this season Norwegian Sun has returned with at least ten calls and for 2016/2017 a line will be cruising to Antarctica with Punta Arenas as a home port.

A Philippine crew member from the Norwegian Sun cruise vessel jumped overboard before reaching a port in South Chile and has been declared 'disappeared' by the Chilean navy which organized a rescue operation.

Chile's flag carrier Lan is celebrating this week the seven decades of its first commercial flight between Santiago and Punta Arenas, extreme south of the country, opening the region to closer trade, tourism and investment opportunities. Actually Lan in the thirties and forties, when the company was first starting did in effect make regional flights from Punta Arenas to nearby places mostly on rough landing strips.

One of the world's largest and most iconic cruise vessels called at Ushuaia, extreme south of Argentina, on Thursday following an absence of over ten years. Given the size of the 'Queen Mary 2', she anchored in the bay and those passengers of the 2.600 on board who decided to land were brought ashore in tenders.

Chile anticipates a 30% increase in cruise activity in the extreme south of the country, mainly Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales, announced Lorena Araya, head of Magallanes region National Tourism Service, Sernatur.

“Royal Caribbean should have known better”. That's the word Tuesday from weather experts who closely monitored the development of the storm that rocked the line's Anthem of the Seas, on Sunday and Monday.

An estimated 58,000 cruise visitors have landed in Ushuaia, extreme south of Argentina during the current 2015/16 season which took off last 15 September, according to the Tierra del Fuego Tourism Institute. The largest number was concentrated in January, with an estimated 25.000, and this weekend promises to be equally busy with several vessels calling with 10.000 passengers.