Will Hodgman,Premier
Minister for Tourism, Hospitality and Events
Cruise ships are an important contributor to Tasmania’s visitor economy, injecting $30.5 million into the state last year.
The Sustainable Cruise Blueprint, released today, outlines our plan to grow this to $50 million by 2022, by encouraging smaller, expedition vessels to visit our regional ports.
The Blueprint will ensure the benefits of cruise ships are shared by even more Tasmanians and supports our plan for visitors to stay longer and spend more time in regional areas.
Cruise ships are a significant part of our growing visitor economy and we are working with the cruise industry to ensure growth is sustainable and well managed.
Importantly, we have demonstrated strong leadership by securing a voluntary agreement from cruise operators not to enter Wineglass Bay and we have worked with TasPorts to ensure there are no more than two large cruise ships in Hobart at a time.
We are working with cruise lines to achieve the following goals by 2022:
– Raise the number of passengers participating in tours from 40 per cent to 50 per cent;
– Introduce turn-around visits for small ships and partial turn-arounds for large ships to five calls per summer; and
– Encourage greater visitation to places like Beauty Point, Port Arthur and the East Coast.
We know cruise passengers are more likely to become repeat visitors and the Blueprint aims to increase the number of cruise visitors returning to our state from the current 10,960 to 15,000.
This Blueprint will guide our immediate actions over the next three years, while a longer-term outlook for the cruise sector will form part of the planning that is underway for our new Visitor Economy Strategy.
The Blueprint can be found here:
