Operator tells government to forget building cruise terminal for now

Sri Lanka should forget the idea of building a cruise terminal for now, since the indicators are not right yet, Crystal Cruises Deployment Vice President Claudius Docekal said, contradicting sentiments of local cruise agents.

“What we cruise lines see over and over again is that destinations, ports, cities and towns spend way too much money on terminals, create terminals that are too expensive and turn out to be white elephants, a terminal that is maybe used 6-7 times a year and rest of the year sits empty,” he said.
He noted that Sri Lanka is not significant turnaround port to justify the building of a cruise terminal.
“Why do you need a cruise terminal? It depends. There are places like Barcelona, Hong Kong, and Singapore where they need proper cruise terminals because they have passenger exchanges from 500 to 1,000 to over 4,000 passengers,” he said.

Docekal noted that with the current capacity of the Katunayake Airport, Sri Lanka cannot become a turnport cruise hub, where cruises are based on, and cruise tourists fly in to embark on the cruise, and those disembarking fly back to their home countries.
“Be realistic. I’ve looked at the airlift into Colombo, unfortunately for over 1,000 passenger ships, you can’t be a turnport, because you simply don’t have the airlift. At the same time, there are cruise lines out there like us, who have 60 passengers to 200-400 passengers, so target them,” he said.

Local cruise ship agents, who in turn have to play second fiddle to cruise ship agents in India when inviting cruises to visit Sri Lanka, have been asking for a cruise terminal, since there are problems in getting tourists to leave their ships and come into Colombo.
They have noted that the berths currently given for cruise ships are too far from the exit into Colombo, and that there are very few but expensive means of arranging transport for the tourists from the ship to the exit.
They have also complained about the current lack of extravagance, and infrastructure such information and telecommunication centres a cruise terminal would have which would bring more cruises to Colombo.
A cruise terminal was included in the ending stages of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s original Megapolis plan in 2000, and was fast tracked when the plan was revived, and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority last year began planning for it.
Docekal, who said that the Colombo Port’s welcoming celebrations are impressive and sufficient for its current level of cruise tourism development, said that if Sri Lanka is dead set on building a cruise terminal, it should be for multiple uses.
“Build it inexpensive, build it functional, and most importantly build it at least for dual use facility,” he said.
He noted that the terminal should be built to be used for conferences as well as for usage of locals.
According to official data, 25,961 cruise tourists set foot in Sri Lanka and stayed a night in 2014, which decreased to 25,177 in 2015.

However, excursionist arrivals, which most cruise tourists are, since they do not spend a night in Sri Lankan accommodation, grew to 195,143 in 2015, from 138,097 in 2014.
According to official data released last year, 22 cruise ships had called on Sri Lanka in 2014, and over 40 had planned to visit in 2015.

Docekal noted that Sri Lanka should improve its luxury tourism product offerings if it intends to attract more cruises to the country.