Interpretation New Zealand

Naumai

One has to “admire” the persistence of the public relations machine that surrounds big ship cruising.

Trumpets sounding the largest cruise ship ever to visit New Zealand arrived in Dunedin yesterday. The constant lobbying of the sector for improved facilities for their clients is paramount. The large cruise ships arrive, spend hours shipping their passengers ashore, spend even longer shipping them away from the local community to some far off attraction,  spend hours shipping their passengers back on board, then leave.

In contrast, small ships such as the Oceanic Discoverer (max capacity 72 passengers) are in a different space. Spending 12 nights exploring New Zealand they visit, and stay, in regional ports and in local anchorages. Exploration ships such as these require no facilities: other than a port visit once in the middle  and at the beginning and end of their 12 night cruise.

There are no casinos, live shows or in many cases television. The “entertainment” are the guest lecturers or expedition leaders. The subjects: New Zealand inc. They use local operators and often allow passengers to arrange their own evening meal ashore.

They don’t lobby for expensive on-shore facilities where they do stop. All they simply need is a wharf and gangplank.

Surely this is a better long term sustainable outcome for NZ tourism than 5,000 people dumped amongst a bunch of logs miles from a city.

It’s a little like the Chinese market.Quick, get the masses in don’t worry about the long-term sustainability of the sector, or the industry. In fact it is deja-vu. We have all been through this with the Korean market not so long ago.

Think what happened to the large ship cruise market in Alaska. The effects that I have seen with my own eyes on small communities, the environment and the costly facilities built, linger on. Search the web for impacts of large cruise ships…….

The large cruise ship market is fickle. One day New Zealand Inc won’t be flavour of the month.

Ka kite ano

Malcolm

the way of the future – sustainable small cruise ship exploring