Portland, a port on the south coast of England, will become the U.K.'s first member of the Atlantic Alliance, a consortium of 16 European cruise destinations on the Atlantic coast.
Ports in the Atlantic Alliance are collectively marketing themselves to cruise lines that have traditionally regarded the ports "as transit and repositioning areas between the Mediterranean and the Baltic," said the alliance.
Portland currently has about a half dozen cruise ship calls per year, mostly due to its proximity to Stonehenge, Bath and the Jurassic Coast. The port is looking to expand that number.
The Atlantic Alliance formed in March. The other alliance ports are Hamburg and Bremerhaven (Germany); IJmuiden, Amsterdam and Rotterdam (the Netherlands); Antwerp (Belgium); Cherbourg, St. Malo, Brest, Nantes, La Rochelle and Bordeaux (France); Santander and Vigo (Spain) and Lisbon (Portugal).
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