Chennai: Though the response from the private operators is not encouraging, the Centre appears to be keen on promoting cruise tourism albeit the international luxury liners most invariably skipping Chennai as their port of call.
Union Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping, Pon Radhakrishnan while reviewing the activities at Cochin port, recently, expressed that the prospects of domestic cruise tourism in India with cruise ships home-porting at Cochin are high. The Minister expressed keen interest in promoting cruise tourism and has even assured to facilitate its development at Chennai and Tuticorin in particular besides establish a new cruise terminal at Ernakulam Wharf to accommodate cruise vessels.
Despite the hype over the untapped cruise tourism opportunities in Tamil Nadu, the state hardly seems to figure in the wish-list of international luxury liners. For instance, a leading cruise travel company has nearly finalised packages for Colombo and Singapore cruises from Mumbai this October on Genting Hong Kong’s Dream Cruises - the first-ever Asian luxury cruise line catering to the high-end market in Asia. The cruise travel company would be selling other Star Cruises brands like Superstar Gemini (ex-Singapore), Superstar Libra (ex-Penang) and Superstar Virgo (ex-Nansha) till March 2017.
Dubai Tourism, which conducted its second cruise tourism roadshow in the national capital recently, following the successful similar campaign in India last year, saw a substantial increase in the number of cruise tourists to Dubai from 6,904 tourists in 2001, to 4,63,055 cruise tourists in 2015. It is now targeting 10 lakh cruise tourists by 2020 from India. Strangely, Dubai Tourism focused on six cities - Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Mumbai and Chennai was skipped.
