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| Cruise season has ended with record number of passengers |
The last cruise ship set sail yesterday, marking the end of the cruise season in Vancouver, and 2024 was a record-breaking year.
According to the Port of Vancouver, 327 cruise ships docked in the city and carried 1.32 million passengers between March 11 and October 29, breaking last year's record by more than 80,000 or 7 percent increase year-on-year.
An Economic Impact Study released earlier this year by the port authority found that passengers, crew and cruise lines spend more than C$1.1 billion locally annually, which includes passengers spending an average of $450 each on hotels, restaurants, shopping, tours and local attractions.
Meanwhile cruise lines spend as much as $660 million a year on goods and services, as many passengers embark from Canada Place in downtown Vancouver for cruises to Alaska, while the ships get re-stocked, re-fueled and maintained between trips.
That works out to each cruise ship injecting an average of $3 million into the local economy.
Vancouver has been a home port for Alaska for more than 30 years, but can the Port of Vancouver do something about the disembarking experience? Getting to the cruise ship is a great experience, but when about 3,000 passengers with their luggage stream off the cruise ship with no orderly process to get taxis or Uber, it's absolute chaos as I have experienced this first hand in June!
Another thing for the city to fix are the homeless and drug addicts wandering around Gastown and Chinatown who make it a terrifying experience for tourists...
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