Chennai: Despite the potential and initiatives to promote cruise tourism in a big way along Tamil Nadu's coast, cruise tourism continuous to be advantageous only to foreign operators who see an increase in the number of Indian tourists booking fly-cruise packages to Singapore and from Singapore to other countries.
The segment has been out of the reach of frequent travellers or the budget conscious.
At present the development and also the traffic is oriented more to Kochi after Mumbai and it may take time for fair winds to bring cruise liners to Tamil Nadu to the expected level where even the not so affluent could cruise along the coast, sources in the travel industry said.
Being one of the prime cruise tourism destinations in India, Kochi has been getting around 40 cruise liners every year bringing tens of thousands of high net worth international tourists to Kerala.
During 2017-18, a total of 1,62,660 cruise passengers had visited India at six major ports namely Mumbai, Chennai, Cochin, Kolkata, New Mangalore and Mormugao Port. About 139 cruise ships visited India at these six major ports.
The Centre has targeted to attract five million cruise tourists by 2040.Among the foreign countries the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) has targeted to promote Hong Kong through engagements with cruise liners and tap the fly-cruise segment in India. The tourism board is working with Dream Cruises and Royal Caribbean International for the same.
Hong Kong welcomed 3,92,000 Indians in 2017 which is a decline of 18 per cent.
For 2018, Hong Kong received over 2,00,000 visitors and remains positive of crossing last year's arrival numbers from India. Dream Cruise will be launching the second phase of pan India promotions for its Hong Kong cruise in the Indian market in September this year and will be showcasing the offerings of its ship World Dream to the travel agents.
