Crowded harbour signals start of cruise season

While the controversy over the proposed Carnival Cruise Port dominates the public discourse, a look at Belize City Harbour today confirmed that–whether you like it or not–the cruise industry remains big business. No less than four ships anchored today, two from the Norwegian Line and two from Royal Caribbean, carrying a total of close to eight thousand passengers. That kind of crowd marks the unofficial opening of the high season for Belizean cruise tourism. According to a spokesman for the Fort Street Tourism Village the volume was handled smoothly and the facility anticipates record arrivals for this year and next. Current projections for 2004 put the total number of ship calls at three hundred and eighty-one, carrying around nine hundred and fifty thousand passengers. The Belize Tourism Board estimates that around eighty percent of those passengers actually disembark, making for a total of seven hundred and sixty thousand cruise visitors.