Maritime ports prepare for busy cruise ship season after pandemic pause

After a two-year break caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, cruise ships are once again scheduled to visit Maritime ports of call.

In Halifax, 150 vessels are scheduled to visit in 2022, with the first two arriving in late April.

“We should be seeing around 85 per cent of the number of cruise calls that we saw in 2019,” said Lane Farguson, the director of communications and marketing at the Port of Halifax.

“It’s a good starting point for us for rebuilding the industry and really it’s going to take a few years to rebuild.”

The first cruise ship to visit any Maritime port will arrive in Charlottetown on April 22.

“We couldn’t be happier,” said Mike Cochrane, CEO of the Port of Charlottetown.

Cochrane says the number of ships visiting Charlottetown will gradually build to a late-summer peak.

“We have 72 on the books for Charlottetown right now and right now about 60 of those are scheduled between September and October,” said Cochrane.

In Saint John, N.B., 69 vessels are scheduled to visit the port. The first ship will dock on May 4 and the bulk of the visits are scheduled after the Labour Day weekend.

Before the pandemic, Port Saint John says cruise ships injected about $68 million a year into the New Brunswick economy.

Darlene Grant Fiander, president of the Tourism Association of Nova Scotia, says the return of the cruise ship industry is good news for their tourism counterparts, who have suffered a financial hit without the influx of tourists the ships bring.

“It was $215 million in spending in 2019. It’s going to take some time for confidence to be there obviously, the cruise lines probably will not be at capacity for passengers that they have been in the past,” said Fiander.

As for what passengers can do when they disembark, port officials are consulting with public health and Transport Canada officials to work out the details.

With files by The Canadian Press.