Comments
Three international cruise liners based in Dubai are now a regular part of Dubai Cruise Tourism, to showcase the different ways to experience the emirate, its hotels and resorts, and to promote the city’s year round calendar of events.
Promoting destinationOfficials of MSC Cruises, Costa Cruises, and Royal Caribbean International were in Mumbai recently, to promote the emirate’s strengths as a cruise tourism destination. Even as they promoted their ships, these cruise liners were part of a road show by the Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing,.
Jamal Humaid Al Falasi, Director, Dubai Cruise Tourism, said the newly-launched UAE multi-entry cruise tourism visa is set to be a boon for tourists from India. “We have a lot of outbound travellers from India going to the UK and the US on cruises. Why not come to Dubai? It is a three-hour hour flight from India. Tourists can get on the cruise in Dubai and go to Oman, Qatar and Bahrain and come back to Dubai,” he said. Dubai is to soon host three of the world’s biggest cruise operators. Currently, it is home to some of the world’s biggest ships, with Costa, Aida, Royal Caribbean, and MSC Cruises. With “22 offices overseas promoting Dubai tourism”, Falasi said there was a huge untapped potential in terms of health tourism, business travellers, student travellers, and even honeymooning couples.
“Dubai Cruise Tourism will attract 5 per cent, or 1 million of the 20 million visitors targeted for 2020. Though we have tie ups with Gulf carriers Emirates and FlyDubai, we can bring in more tourists via cruises,” Falasi told BusinessLine . Dubai Cruise Tourism started roadshows in the country last year. “We are targeting families, couples, friends and even MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) tourists,” he said, adding that apart from the cruise liners based in Dubai, 26 other ships could now be docked at the port.
Terminal activitySpeaking about the steady growth numbers in cruise tourism, Falasi said, “Last year, we had 386,000 passengers from 94 cruise ships. This year, we had 450,000 passengers. Next season, we can expect to host 550,000 tourists.”
He added that building new terminals has helped increase the handling capacity.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.