Johanna Jainchill
Rockland, Maine, last week reversed a decision to raise the per-passenger fees for cruise ships 600%, from $1 to $6.
The incident had pitted the coastal town’s City Council against Royal Caribbean International, which brings Rockland its largest cruise ship, the 2,504-passenger Jewel of the Seas.
The City Council reversed its decision because Royal Caribbean had planned a port call so far in advance that the cruise line had already planned and budgeted based on the $1 per passenger fee.
However, the council could reverse its decision again for future calls. And another recommendation, recently made by Rockland’s Harbor Management Commission, would limit the number of vessels that can call in Rockland to three big ships per year. The recommendations also would allow for 15 midsize ships and 35 small cruise ships annually.
The situation in Rockland demonstrates the varying interests in every community, especially small ones like Rockland — population 8,000 — and how much the cruise industry still has to fight negative images.
Shari Closter, the interim executive director of the Penobscot Bay Regional Chamber of Commerce, which has its office in Rockland, said there was a large amount of what she called misinformation about the cruise industry out there. Perhaps more damaging, in some cases there was no information at all.
She said that information the media had disseminated about the cruise industry’s environmental record and crime issues was “very misleading” and had led some locals to believe that Rockland would be better off without cruise ships.
Since March, when the council first raised the fees, Closter has been providing the city council details about the cruise industry and its economic impact on the region. She also said that local business owners — those who have a vested interested in growing the region’s tourism industry — had no idea about the Council’s decision.
Closter said more than 100 members of the community, including board members, downtown Rockland businesses, state government officials and local residents and government leaders, contacted the chamber of commerce about what was happening with Rockland and the cruise industry.
What Closter has taken from the incident is that the region needs to establish a cruise ship task force comprising people with a vested interest in Maine's MidCoast region as a port of call. The task force could analyze existing cruise industry conditions and growth potential in the region and could suggest guidelines and recommendations for future cruise tourism planning and development, with an overall goal of promoting citywide and regional sustainability.
It might be worth watching how things pan out in this small community, because as the cruise industry grows, more Rockland-type issues will begin to surface.