Peter Elson: We must improve the welcome for cruise liners

Jun 1 2009 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

THE contrast could hardly have been sharper. Privileged to tour the splendid Holland America Line flagship Rotterdam last week, I was elevated nine decks above the waterline to view the equally magnificent Liverpool Pier Head waterfront.

But the pleasure depended on which way you looked: southwards in the direction of the Three Graces is terrific. Northwards is a very different and dismal affair.

Even the new apartment tower block at the top end of Princes Parade looks forlorn, standing in semi-derelict isolation amid stalled redevelopment.

Down on the ground, it’s embarrassing. Clearly, you don’t get much for your £19m these days. We got a floating concrete pontoon, but at least it transformed the city’s appeal for cruise liner calls. Yet the infrastructure greeting premium paying international passengers is deeply unattractive.

How come the main gangway entrance has broken cladding on its sides? Why is there barbed wire all around it at the landside end? There are more aesthetic ways of discouraging monkey-like scallies.

A natural focal point, the Titanic Memorial needs re-pointing, regilding and de-vegging of plant-life. However, Judith Feather, Liverpool’s head of events, assures me this will be done.

Again the north end of Princes Parade is ugly, temporary fencing that blocks the view of any spectators foolishly wishing to photograph the berthed ships.

Yet again, I ask, why not remove this fencing and re-deck the greenheart wood jetties as viewing platforms? This would create a superb feature at minimal cost and transform people’s perceptions of the cruise terminal facility.

This year we have 14 ships visiting, but we be should be aiming at double that. Given the long lead-in time needed by cruise planners, the cruise terminal manager, Angie Redhead, is doing a sterling job.

It’s some achievement to attract spectacular vessels such as Rotterdam, which, as many readers know now, was the first passenger ship arrival in Liverpool from New York in 43 years.

Liverpool was founded on the transatlantic trade, so let’s hope that many more follow this template set by last week’s fully-booked 1,316 berth, five star ship.

So we turn yet again to the conundrum of why the opportunity to begin and end cruises at the currently misnamed “terminal” has still not been resolved between the council, Peel Ports and alleged government restrictions on its use.

My colleague, Peter Windsor, in last week’s new LDP Business Magazine, interviewed David Dingle, UK head of the world’s mightiest cruise company, Carnival Cruise Corporation, which owns Cunard and Holland America Line.

Mr Dingle is incredulous that this troublesome turn-around problem is unresolved. He is the man who will make crucial decisions on whether Liverpool can have a far bigger slice of the cruise industry’s wealth, but finds the current impasse astonishing.

We’ve lost Thomson Cruises after a “misunderstanding” that it could run 30 cruises from the new terminal. Fred Olsen Cruise Line remains, but one senses its impatience.

Not only is Langton Dock Cruise Terminal awkward for ships, but it scored a lamentably low passenger satisfaction rate as one of the UK’s worst. One hopes and prays the credit crunch has seen off the ill-advised plans to put a 34-storey tower on the former IoM Steam Packet plot, adjacent to the Royal Liver Buildings and opposite the Titanic Memorial. It would block landmark views of the RLB, St Nicholas Church and the city.

Instead, this plot is precisely where a two storey terminal building with ground floor baggage and customs and a cafeteria above for spectators should go. Now will someone call Mr Dingle and tell him we have the solution to our problem?

peter.elson