The recovery of cruise tourism has been slow and Yucatán has yet to stabilize the numbers of maritime travelers it received in 2019. Raúl Paz Noriega, Technical Secretary of the Secretariat of Tourism Development explained that, in the last three years the number of cruise ships arriving in Progreso have been resuming routes and passenger volumes and it is expected that 2024 will be a year of growth in this tourism segment.
After attending the Global Maritime Trade Cruise Fair (Seatrade Cruise Global) held in Miami in recent days, Paz Noriega said that they attended this event and attended 15 appointments with cruise companies and 18 more with suppliers and companies in the shipping industry.
He highlighted that the State Executive attended this event to hold talks with the companies Fincantieri, Boskalis Dragamex and Global Ports Holding, to whom he presented a portfolio of investment opportunities and the progress being made in the development of the Port of Progreso.
According to him, no new cruise lines have been confirmed for Progreso for 2024; however, it represents a bet on the recovery of the international shipping sector, which has not yet recovered in terms of passenger volumes after three years of the pandemic. At this moment, he added, the governments have lifted almost all the sanitary restrictions imposed by Covid and the cruise ships are improving their occupancy volumes.
In 2019, he said, the best year for cruise ship arrivals and passenger numbers for Yucatán was 2019, with figures of 144 arrivals and close to 450,000 cruise passengers. In 2021, the data was very low, due to the beginning of the reactivation of the sector. 2022 reported for Yucatan 99 arrivals and 52 thousand travelers, so it is expected that, substantially improve both the volume of routes, capacity of ships and thus, the number of visitors said.
The event held in Fort Lauderdale brought together the world’s most important companies in the cruise sector and he pointed out that the problem of the recovery of the floating hotel lines has caused very critical problems in the economies of the Caribbean countries that are the points of visit of the mega-ships.
He added that the visit to the city of Miami was useful for Governor Mauricio Vila to continue promoting the projection of Yucatan at an international level, seeking the arrival of more tourism and economic spillover to the state, by strengthening the maritime connection through Puerto Progreso.
He pointed out that the Yucatecan executive held work meetings with the general director of Fincantieri, Pierroberto Folgiero, the regional manager of Boskalis Dragamex, David Vergara, and with Mehmet Kutman, executive of Global Ports Holding, the world’s largest cruise port operator, to continue promoting the advantages of the state and promote its development with strategic projects that benefit the families of the state.
He added that, in the search for more opportunities, Vila Dosal presented before Mehmet Kutman, a presentation of Yucatan’s economic growth, above the country’s average, the competitive advantages for exports, as well as the investments that have been placed in Yucatan in the last three years, he said.
TYT Newsroom
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The Wordle answer today is FLORA.