St. Kitts and Nevis'
Minister of State for Tourism, Sen. the Hon. Richard "Ricky" Skerritt, is promising "a complete picture of the 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 cruise ship seasons.
He said that the decision by three major cruise lines to include St. Kitts on their itineraries over the next two seasons, will result in tremendous growth in the number of cruise ship passengers visiting the twin-island Federation.
Carnival Cruise Lines said it will bring the 2,124-passenger "Carnival Legend" of the "Spirit Class" into St. Kitts from January 2007.
Royal Caribbean Cruise Line will add the new Voyager Class super-
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Explorer of the Seas |
ship "Explorer of the Seas" and "Splendour of the Seas" and Celebrity Cruises, the "Galaxy."
Mr. Skerritt in an interview with National Echo said the visit by the "Carnival Legend" is a very welcome development because "we've been working on Carnival Cruise Line for sometime."
"That predates me, but I am happy to say that we've come to some understanding for one of the requirements for Carnival Cruise Line coming here and Carnival has just announced that they will be bringing a ship here from next season and its something that we hope to build on," he said.
He said the big news lies in the 2007/2008 Cruise Season, "because the tremendous increase in deployment by Royal Caribbean/Celebrity Cruise Lines ships here will double their arrival figures from just over 50,000 for that line alone, to about 100,000 passengers."
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Galaxy |
"(This) is going to help us to grow our visitor arrivals to St. Kitts by the cruise shipping sector, massively. I think we're going to be looking at over 20 percent increase," said Minister Skerritt, who promised " a more complete picture of that Season over the coming weeks."
Speaking of the significance that a Carnival product coming to St. Kitts has, Minister Skerritt noted that Carnival is the largest cruise line in the world.
"If that brand is coming here, then it does have an impact, and the other is because of the tremendous growth that we're going to experience in the
2006/2007 and 2007/2008 Seasons," said Minister Skerritt.
Mr. Skerritt, who recently returned home following separate meetings with top executives of Royal Caribbean, Celebrity
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Splendour of the Seas |
Cruises and Carnival Cruise lines said the 2020-passenger "Empress of the Seas" and the "Constellation,"
which carries 2,032 passengers will continue to visit.
New ships visiting will be the Celebrity's 1,870-passenger "Galaxy," and the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, 2,076 passenger "Splendour of the Seas," and the 3,840 passenger, "Explorer of the Seas."
"Carnival Legend" will make its first call in January 2007.
