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Displaying items by tag: Cruise Fallout

Visits to Ireland by cruise liners are unlikely to recover fully until 2023, which will lead to a major drop in tourism revenue for towns such as Cobh.

The town in Cork Harbour was due to host 105 liner visits this year and a further 110 liners were booked to tie up there in 2021. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has hit cruise line companies hard and a Government ban on all liner visits to ports remains in place, although some companies are running cruises off the Irish coast.

The chairman of an umbrella body which represents 140 European ports dealing with cruise liners has said if the ban was lifted he could see some smaller liners visiting the country before the end of the year.

Captain Michael McCarthy, chairman of Cruise Europe, said the Irish economy would lose an estimated €60m per year from cruise liner tourism if the ban is not lifted.

More on this Irish Examiner story here.

Only one ship visited the Port of Cork this season Afloat.ie adds when Saga Sapphire in mid-March berthed at Ringaskiddy though with concern of Covid-19 but cruisegoers were given a clean bill of health. 

Published in Cruise Liners

William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago