For the month of January, the Port of St. Maarten and the destination received over a quarter million cruise passengers or a 10.1 per cent increase over the same period in 2013.
In January the port catered to 284,405 cruise passengers and 112 ship calls, 25,974 more than in January 2013 (258,431, with 101 ship calls).
Port management welcomes the increase which demonstrates that all efforts in upgrading the destination along with itinerary marketing and the positive feedback from passengers during their visit, is keeping the port and destination at the forefront.
According to data from the 2014-2015 Cruise Industry News Annual Report, with full year operations of the Norwegian Breakaway and Norwegian Getaway in 2014, Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) will become the third largest cruise company by capacity in 2014 behind Carnival Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean International.
The Port of St. Maarten both in January and February welcomed NCL’s new generation ships the Breakaway and Getaway. For the month of January NCL brought close to 40,000 cruise passengers to the destination.
NCL has been named ‘Caribbean’s Leading Cruise Line,’ by World Travel Awards.
The Port of St. Maarten in 2013 received 1,785.670 cruise passengers, 32,455 passengers more than in 2012. Cruise passengers arrived on 631 vessel calls for 2013. Overall for 2012, the destination received 622 ship calls with 1,753,215 cruise passengers.
In 1980 the destination only received 105,000 cruise passengers for the entire year. This grew to 564,251 in 1995 and to 1,055.040 eight years later in 2002.
The Port of St. Maarten maintains a prime position in Caribbean Cruise tourism.