SUVA is ranked eighth in the region in terms of spread of port calls by international ships to individual destinations selected by cruise liners companies. Lautoka is ranked 13th and Port Denarau is 14th.
This was information stated in the South Pacific Tourism Organisation’s Report titled Pacific Cruise Market Research and Intelligence Project — Final Report March 2015.
The report stated Suva had 40 calls from various cruise liners, Lautoka had 22 and Port Denarau 19 calls.
New Caledonia’s capital Noumea was ranked number one with 162 calls predicted for the year. Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila was number two with 113 calls.
The survey was conducted for ports with 20 or more calls in a year.
The report also said Pacific destinations were seeing remarkable growth from 2012 to 2015 in the number of cruise ship calls.
“Not only are established ports benefiting but also many new Pacific destinations are appearing in cruise liner itineraries,” the report stated.
“Hundred and twenty seven different Pacific destinations will receive cruise calls in 2015 versus 78 in 2012.”
For calls by all ships by country, Fiji tops the table by recording 983 calls for this year. French Polynesia is second with 757 and Vanuatu is third with 258 visits.
“The past three years have seen rapid escalation in cruise capacity based out of Australasia by cruise liners bringing more and larger ships to the region and, to a lesser degree, by offering more short cruises,” the report stated.
“So, the impressive growth in number of ship calls and destinations visited is principally due to these deployment decisions.”
The report stated Fiji was now in the developing cruise destinations category and New Caledonia and Vanuatu were the only two countries in the well-developed cruise destinations.
