RE: Cruising and tourism – a wasted opportunity.

It is with great disappointment that I read the report of the comments by Mr Peter Jones, Port Chairman, published in the Western Telegraph on August 5, that in effect put the subject of cruising and the Haven on the back burner indefinitely.

Sadly I cannot agree with many of the comments or the views of Mr Jones that do not give sufficient weight to the development of tourism in Pembrokeshire. In these days of austerity we are desperate to increase the inflow of money into the county yet cruises could offer up to 2,000 extra tourists per day whereas we could not achieve that number by normal means in a month.

We must accept that the benefits would apply widely across the county, but such as Pembroke Dock would benefit from additional retail sales, cafe and restaurant customers and an enormous demand for local coach services to satisfy the requirement for trips around the county. There are at least three separate venues attractive to cruise tourists.

One has only to experience the impact of cruise ships in the Norwegian Fiords where the economy of even small villages has been revolutionised by day call cruise ships.

At one port of call on a recent cruise there were 24 coaches awaiting the arrival of the passengers to take them to various places of interest and this was not unusual.

I would not suggest that we seek to cater for the latest style of cruise ship carrying 4,000 passengers and over.

The failure to expand the use of Milford by cruise ships is most likely due to the lack of a berth and the shallow water in the bay. This means that passengers need to be tendered from the ship anchored mid stream, to the shore and it is not surprising that cruise companies dislike having to tender even 1,000 passengers ashore and back to the ship, if each tender carried 20 passengers that would be 50 boatloads each way which is not only expensive but time consuming, the latter being most important when a ship is due to sail early morning. With the use of some imagination and technical skill there is a berth, the Celtic Quay, already available and unused at Pembroke Dock with enough room to park all the coaches necessary.

Admittedly the project would cost money to resurface the access road and engineering to deal with the tides, but this is not insuperable.

We are not short of water or a 2000 passenger ship such as the Norwegian Spirit that has a draft of only 24ft.

With respect the concept of a ‘Turnaround Port’ is not realistic since we could not berth more than one ship at a time and there is also a very determined effort by the Port of Bristol to house several smaller ships on a turnaround basis. The geographical position of Pembrokeshire would not influence the needs of day call ships in any way, in fact it is an incentive to bring ships to a place more difficult to access by road.

Perhaps it would be useful to arrange a meeting to assess both sides of the equation between the business people likely to benefit and members of the Port Authority who are in a position to influence the future of cruising in the Haven. In any event it is hoped a second look at what might be achieved in this sphere will take place.

R V BRYAN

Pembroke Dock