Cruise ships make a comeback

THE cruise ship business is looking better for the South Pacific. Pacific Island Monthly’s analysis of the semi annual, comprehensive tabulation of cruise ship schedules world-wide, pub lished by the New York Times shows a doubling of South Pacific listings, com pared to the last two Times tabulations.

Excluding both the cruise activity in the Hawaiian islands and the expanding business in the sub-antarctic areas of the South Pacific (more about this later), the October 28 Times listed 20 ships as visiting the islands of the South Pacific.

This compared to nine such listings in February, 1990, and 11 notations in October, 1989.

Among the new listings are: A Trans-Pacific passage, with stops in Pago Pago, Suva and Lae, by the massive Qtieen Elizabeth 2; 9 Calls upon a whole string of rarely visited islands in FSM and PNG by Linblad’s newly-launched Frontier Spirit ; and 9 The arrival of a third Soviet cruise ship in South Pacific waters, the Fyodor

Dostoyevsk.

In general terms the cruise business is expanding rapidly, and the South Pacific gets relatively little of it, but that portion appears to be growing.

Estimates for the number of North Americans alone going on cruises of three or more days, somewhere in the world, shows a climb from half a million in 1970, to 3.3 million in 1989 and 3.6 million in 1990. The business is expected to keep growing, with more ships and more passengers. To some extent this is fueled by a combination of demographics, economics and politics in the First World. More people live longer, retire earlier, and have more in the way of public and private pensions than ever before in these nations, and that’s good for the cruise business.

The South Pacific, however, is distant from most First World population centers, and it is easier, less expensive and quicker to do one’s cruising in the Mediterranean or the Carribean than in the South Pacific. So while the Times most recent cruise issued showed 20 South Pacific listings, the world-wide total was 184; the proportion with at least one stop in the South Pacific was thus about 11 per cent, compared to about 3 per cent six months earlier, but still most cruises go elsewhere. The most recent tally was for travel during the northern hemisphere winter, from the beginning of November to the end of

February.

When a cruise ship arrives in port it does wonders for the local economy; let’s assume a modest S4O per tourist for taxis, drinks, lunch and shopping. This would

create a one-shot 575,000 jolt to the service economy of any port visited by the 1,864-passenger QE2, or 56,500 when the Frontier Spirit came to town. Cruise ship tourism means that nobody has to invest in hotel rooms, or airport expan sions, to accommodate the extra business but it does jam the restaurants at lunchtime when the ship is in port.

Perhaps the best-known of the new comer ships to the Pacific, after the Qe2 , is the 1050-passenger Achille Lauro\ it secured its fame in a grim way off the coast of Egypt when, a couple of years ago, Palestinian terrorists killed one of its American passengers. The victim, par tially crippled, was thrown overboard, wheelchair and all by the gang. The Achille Lauro, as a consequence, spends less time in Middle Eastern waters these days. It will be based in Sydney for a while, and will visit Noumea, Isle of Pines (both in New Caledonia) as well as the Australian islands of Norfolk and Lord Howe.

The most interesting of the newcomers is the Frontier Spirit. The ship is owned by the Linblad organisation (the Rolls Royce of the business), it is designed to be sensitive to environmental issues, and it visits truly out-of-the way places. The

ship, launched in Kobe in June, 1990, made its maiden voyage in November.

Among its state-of-the-art features are its

waste-disposal systems: the departing

bilge water is filtered through an oil separator so that no oil is discharged.

Further, non-biodegradable waste is frozen at sea for processing and disposal once it returns to port.

On its maiden voyage, the Frontier Spirit was scheduled to sail from Guam to Rabaul stopping at Chuuk and such oft neglected FSM islands as Lamotrek, Puluwat, Satawan, and Kapingamar angi. After Rabual, despite the civil disturbances, it was scheduled to call at Bougainville, the only cruise ship listed with such plans. Then it was to go through the Solomons, again stopping at islands not listed for others (such as Choisel and Malaita) before heading via Vanuatu to New Zealand. Along the way it planned to visit two of New Zealand’s remote and inaccessible Kermadec Islands (Raoul and Macauley.) fFour types of cruise ship Would-be passengers have four types of cruise ships to choose from in the South Pacific.

There are the round-the-world ships, such as the QE2, the Canberra , the SagaJjord and the Royal Viking Sun , all of which will pass through the area. There are also two Soviet ships, the

Azerbaydzhan, returning again this

year, and the newcomer, the Fyodor

Dostoyevsky.

Then there are seven ships which are based in the South Pacific, and which sail waters close to their home ports. The Melanesian Explorer and Discoverer work the coastal and river waters of Papua New Guinea, while sail- and enginepowered Wing Song does a series of weeklong tours from its Tahiti base. Similarly, though not listed by the Times , the Pairs tar works the waters of Fiji and Vanuatu, and there are three ships that serve the Galagapos Islands.

Another specialised category is the ships, like the Frontier Spirit , which travel to out-of-the way places, including uninhabited islands. Included in this grouping is the World Discoverer which will start one of its voyages in Port Moresby this season. It, or its sister ship, Society Explorer , will visit Pitcairn, and uninhabited Dulcie and Henderson, later in the year.

Finally there are the six traditional cruise ships usually making two-to-three tours of some of the more traditional ports. These include the Belorussiya (an

other Russian ship), the Vistafjord, the Royal Viking Sky, the Pacific Princess and the Sea Princess, and the Ac hill e Lauro.

Islands Visited. Fiji and French Polynesia are the favorites of the cruise

ship managers. Excluding the ships based

in a particular location, eight cruise ships will call in Fiji and Mystery Island, with the Sea Princess paying the only record visit to Rotuma.

Tahiti, Bora Bora, and Moorea are frequently visited, with French Polynesia drawing seven ships. Kona, Nuku Hiva and Rangiroa are scheduled for single visits.

Papua New Guinea will be visited by six ships, with most of them calling at Port Moresby. Lae is only visited by the Qf2 , while Rabaul gets a couple of visitors, and Kavieng and Bougainville are on the Frontier Spirit schedule.

Tonga is also on the list for six ships, with most calling at Nukualofa, but the Frontier Spirit will also stop at Ata and the Fyodor Dostoyevsky at Vava’u, American Samoa perhaps because many of the passengers are American draws five visits to Pago Pago, while Western Samoa get only one call, from the Royal Viking Sky. Vanuatu and New Caledonia will each play host to four ships, with several of them stopping at Isle of Pines.

The Solomons, in addition to the multiple stops for the Frontier Spirit, draws only one other listed ship, the Belorussiya.

There are single notations of visits to Guam, to the Cooks (Raratonga), and to Kiribati (Christmas Island) and of the previously-mentioned calls in FSM.

Among the independent nations of the South Pacific, only Nauru and Tuvalu failed to make the listings. While the Time’s tabulation is clearly not complete, it is at least a good sample of the cruise schedules.

One of the recent trends in cruise ship scheduling is to take passengers to Far South Pacific islands where there are no resident populations. Both World Dis coverer and Frontier Spirit will spend much of this cruising season the Antarctic summer visiting remote islands in that area. These include the Snares, Auck land Island, Campbell Island, and Balleny Islands. The World Explorer will call also upon a chilly but inhabited place, New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, on its cruise to Antarctica.

Costs. There is a wide range in costs, which are usually quoted per person (assuming double occupancy) and in US dollars; flying to and from the cruise ship is often included. The round-the-world trip on the QE2 comes in a wide range of prices from 522,935 to 539,744. Two weeks on the Pacific Princess, going from Tahiti to Sydney, is about SB,OOO. Three to-seven night trips on the Melanesian Explorer and the Melanesian Discoverer come to about S3OO a night. □