Comment: A happy berth day for Liverpool

Jun 12 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

THE sight of the spectacular Grand Princess, tied up at Liverpool’s new £17m landing stage, shows that the city has rightly regained its status as a top maritime destination in an incredibly short space of time.

The berthing of the 109,000-tonne Grand Princess proves that Liverpool can at last bring the biggest mega-liners safely into the city centre, less than a year after the cruise liner terminal opened.

Indeed, five years from now, activity at the terminal is expected to reach such a level that almost £3m of tourism spend will be attributable to visitors arriving in this way.

This represents a significant boost to the local economy. And such tourists – who generally are not short of money, given that they have chosen such an opulent means of travel – now have the kind of facilities in the city where they can splash the cash, such as the Liverpool One and Metquarter developments.

In the meantime, it is enough to marvel at the scale of what is already happening. On each of her four day-long visits this summer, Grand Princess will disgorge 2,600 passengers and 1,100 crew members.

This year alone, Liverpool Cruise Terminal will welcome almost 18,300 cruise passengers who are predicted to spend £1.28m. A further 14 cruise ships will call at the terminal in 2009, bringing in some 23,500 passengers and an additional 1m gross tonnage of shipping to the river.

Previously, visiting cruise liners had to anchor mid-river and be tendered by Mersey Ferries, an arrangement which cruise lines increasingly resisted, causing calls to dwindle to almost nil.

But now, with Liverpool’s status as a major cruise port restored, it means passengers can once again enjoy the incomparable experience of enjoying the sight of that internationally-famous waterfront from some of the biggest vessels in the world.