Addressing a major cruise seminar held in Dubai at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) 2011, Neil Palomba, corporate operating officer for MSC Cruises said there was a limited choice of ports in the region and more needed to be done to develop the infrastructure to enable cruise lines to bring in bigger ships and extend the winter sailing season.

The company will base the MSC Lirica in Abu Dhabi from November sailing 19 cruises calling at Muscat, Fujairah, Khasab and Dubai, and he said expectations were that capacity could be increased in future with a bigger ship and more itineraries.

“Other challenges are the cost of doing business where the vessel operator charges are comparable with those in Europe, a region of high demand which sells itself – here, our number one priority is to increase local sourcing as there is less potential to grow without passengers from the region.”

His views were echoed by Helen Beck, director of international representatives, EMEA for Royal Caribbean, who said the company would like to offer ‘butterfly’ options where passengers could have a choice of two different itineraries from one hub.

“One of our key opportunities is to widen the scope of our itineraries,” she said.  “We are restricted in our offering and need to be able to offer the region as a whole – the ports are there but the infrastructure is missing to cater to passenger ships rather than cargo vessels.

“I do believe, looking at the map, that we could go down as far as Salalah, up to Kuwait and Bahrain and eventually to Iran and Saudi Arabia, but I don’t see these ports starting to make moves to invest in their facilities.”

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