CRUISE INDUSTRY IS BOOMING IN UK: THE NEW BOOMING ORGAN OF BRITISH ECONOMY WITH MORE THAN 10% GROWTH IN LAST 15 YEARS

In last decade to now, UK cruise industry has maintained an average growth above 10%. Even in the years of recession, the growth trend has not diminished.

From Portsmouth to the Orkneys, UK ports are seeing their ships come in as the British cruising industry charts a course for a record year.Forget Mediterranean beaches and sizzling sun; an increasing number of tourists want castles, countryside and culture – and Britain has all three in abundance. Forget too the cliché that cruises are just for the elderly. Today’s cruises cater for all ages, budgets and activities. Next month, when German cruise ship Mein Schiff 1docks at Invergordon in the Scottish Highlands, 50 passengers will race off on the liner’s bikes to savour the scenery and visit Dalmore distillery.

At the lower end, the cruise holiday sector has grown thanks to budget conscious tourists’ desire for all-inclusive breaks. Six days in one of these floating hotels, with round the clock food, entertainment and sports facilities, is available from £600 a head.

But the luxury end of the cruise market is also steaming ahead. When the Cunard flagship Queen Mary 2 leaves Liverpool for New York next July, recreating the historic first Cunard voyage 175 years earlier, those on board for the 10-night cruise will have paid between £2,250 and £15,500 a head. Tickets from Liverpool sold out within hours.

Last year, UK ports welcomed a record 866,000 passengers, of all nationalities, on day calls – a 20 per cent rise on 2012. Moreover, a record number of passengers, exceeding 1m for the first time and 10 per cent up on 2012, embarked on their cruise at a UK port. A strong 2014 is in prospect too, with some of the UK’s 51 cruise ports predicting new records.

Britain has a taste for cruising; it is Europe’s number one market with 27 per cent of passengers and second globally only to North America. This year, it is expected that more UK passengers will start their holiday cruise from British ports – for UK or overseas destinations – than from an overseas port.

For embarkation, the biggest UK ports are Southampton, Dover and Harwich. Southampton, the focus of £35m cruise-related investment in recent years, handled 430 cruise liner visits and 1.6m holidaymakers in 2013.

The Cruise Lines International Association estimates that the industry’s total benefit to the UK economy was £2.45bn in 2012. Other prominent embarkation ports include the Tyne and Liverpool, which has won a fight over potential clawback of European funding for its new cruise liner terminal, and expects to receive 47 cruise ships this year.

Bristol – until recently a car and bulk cargo port – only started handling cruise liner business last year, with eight cruises leaving for the Norwegian fiords or the Canaries. It will double that this year to 16.

Invergordon on the Cromarty Firth, a North Sea oil rig repair centre, is the UK’s third busiest port for transit passengers: people who arrive by cruise liner for a day visit. Thanks to its proximity to Loch Ness, last year 89,900 cruise passengers from 66 liners descended on this community of just 4,500 people. Captain Iain Dunderdale, cruise development manager for Cruise Highlands, advises a whisky distillery visit first. “Then you’re guaranteed to see the monster later on.”

There are some clouds on UK cruise ports’ horizons. There are worries that proposed stricter interpretation of checks by the UK Border Force could deter ships from calling at UK ports, and tougher European sulphur emission controls, due to come into force in the North Sea from 2015, may have an impact on some cruise calls.

For some ports, the challenge is managing demand. Orkney is expecting its second record year in a row for cruise ship arrivals in 2014, with 76 liners due to call, carrying up to 65,000 passengers and 20,000 crew. It is braced for July 5 when three liners with capacity to carry up to 7,000 visitors are scheduled to arrive – equivalent to one-third of the archipelago’s population.

“It’s fantastic for the local economy, but it does raise the question of how many people we can cope with,” says Pat Stone, owner of local tour guide service Orkney Aspects.

Local tourism agencies and businesses, self-styled “Team Orkney”, co-operate to prevent attractions being swamped and to ensure that local tea rooms bake enough scones, she says. “It’s like a military operation – it has to be.”

Reporting by Chris Tighe, Andrew Bounds, Mure Dickie and John Murray Brown

UK cruise passengers push the boat out

For those who like to push the boat out, it is possible to go on a cruise fit for a Queen – quite literally, since her Majesty has twice chartered the Hebridean Princess for her private use, writes Chris Tighe.

Sailing from Oban on Scotland’s west coast, the vessel is the smallest cruise ship afloat with just 30 cabins and a maximum of 50 guests, and is also one of the most exclusive.

Effectively a floating country house, those on a cruise of Scotland’s highlands and islands can enjoy fine dining, marble bathrooms and little extras – like a wee dram in their breakfast porridge.

Some cruise ships can take 3,500 or more passengers but its small size gives this select group superior access; this Easter Sunday they will have attended the morning service at Iona Abbey.

Luxury, with a crew to guest ratio of almost one-to-one, is not cheap; this Easter’s seven night cruise costs between £3,200 and £7,350 a head, and an eight night cruise to Norway costs up to £13,000. The clientele, many of them regulars, are mostly 50-something professionals or retirees, although the Hebridean’s “Footloose” walking cruises attract a younger group. They enjoy gala dinners and lectures on board combined with many visits to beautiful Scottish islands.

While customers of mass market cruises have to lug their suitcases to the vessel, guests on the Hebridean Princess can have theirs collected from home. Special requests are accommodated; one regular is provided with a bottle of Green Chartreuse, to supplement the range of fine wines and champagnes included in the price.

While this level of luxury is rare, many cruise visitors want to learn more about the places they visit. Several Scottish ports have bands of volunteers who greet cruise passengers, such as Invergordon’s Oystercatcher Hosts, who aim to maximise trade for local businesses.

Wealthy arrivals present business opportunities across the UK’s 51 cruise ports. Alan Fidler, tour co-ordinator at East Coast Taxis, which has links to the port of Tyne, takes Dutch tourists to “Zweinstein” – Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, aka Alnwick Castle – and uses contacts to get visitors into private areas of Newcastle’s historic sites.

One American family from Tennessee was dismayed to discover that the Newcastle brewery which made Newcastle Brown Ale had been demolished. But Mr Fidler came up trumps with bottles of Brown Ale, drunk on a Newcastle pub terrace at dusk with panoramic views of the Tyne bridges. “It was like they’d arrived in heaven,” he says.