Northern exposure

Cruise lines, particularly the largest of the large, clearly have an impact on the local economy when they call at smaller ports. But one "expert" clearly feels that the impact may be far more negative then first imagined.

Let's look at a small, beautiful and relatively pristine section of the world map, a place where residents and local port authorities wrestled with the impact of disgorging thousands of cruise passengers into their villages and hamlets.

Come with me to a land of perfect autumn skies hovering over hillsides adorned with greenery, save for the sections of freshly plowed, deep-brown earth. Imagine all of this winding down to a line of sand dunes swimming in the deep blue of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

This is Prince Edward Island. But tranquility comes at a price. Everyone wants a piece of the action. The folks who live in this Canadian province and the kind folks who govern them had to make a big decision about future cruise ship tourism.

Prince Edward islanders and Tourism Charlottetown had a problem. The "downtown" wharf could not accommodate large ships. But they had a plan. For $18 million they could expand their wharf to handle most of the bodacious behemoths calling on their shores. They would need to expand and charge a head tax on every cruise passenger to fund it.

Cruise passengers have good reason to look forward to visiting the island. The fictional "Anne of Green Gables" is set here, and the major export seems to be jams and jellies. Along the pier one can feast on a lobster lunch while enjoying bucolic harbor views.

But once the pier was expanded and ready for operation in the fall of 2007, what would happen? Would the local economy soar on the wings of thousands of cruise passengers? Would locals still be able to get a lobster sandwich for the price of a Big Mac? Just how much would these cruise passengers spend?

Would it, some locals wondered, really be worth it?

So they did what every municipality would do. They decided to call in an expert. Someone who had been through this before.

As the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported last July, Len Ishmael, director general of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, was invited to speak to legislators and interested parties at a conference in the province.

What Ishmael said at this conference caused a bit of a stir and made the Prince Edward islanders wonder if they were headed in the right direction.

Ishmael talked about her experiences in the Caribbean, where she said the cruise industry made about $6 billion in profits with only about 2% of that remaining in the Caribbean in the form of taxes.

She also addressed the issue of cruise passenger spending. As quoted by the CBC, she said, "In most of our islands, there is a famous saying: Cruise ships disgorge passengers on shore, and they buy a phone card so they can call home, and they buy a Pepsi. Those are the two Ps. Then they might use the bathroom. That's the third P."

The locals already had a feel for this sort of thing. The common wisdom is that the average cruise ship passenger spends $66 per day in port.

Ishmael pointed out that her organization had discussed a $20 head tax on cruise passengers. But the cruise lines decided to bypass the islands that imposed the tax.

Enter Kim Green, a port advocate charged with increasing tourism to Prince Edward Island. She pointed out that the cruise industry in North America has grown by more than 1,000% over the past 10 years. Not only was the port expansion approved but a cruise passenger welcome center was added, along with more than $20 million in local port infrastructure improvements.

The good folks in Charlottetown decided to proceed with their port expansion.

I recently spoke with Tracey Singleton, the marketing director for cruise ship development for Tourism Charlottetown. She is clearly prepared to declare that the local government made the right decision.

"We will have 69,000 annual visitors arriving by ship," she said. "What is great about this is that most of these arrivals are in the spring and fall, normally our slow seasons. It has expanded jobs in a dramatic manner. Restaurants that once closed for the season now remain open, and local guide and tourism services have several additional months to operate."

The Preserve Company is able to provide more jam-making jobs. They offer tours of their plant to cruise ship visitors. The Lobster on the Wharf Restaurant is thriving with views of the Hillsborough River and the port.

This is not a big story. It is a small story about the successful merging of interests between large cruise lines eager to expose their guests to the "Alaska of the East" and a group of lovely islands that does not want to make a pact with the devil.

So far, the locally made products, trained guides, bike rental outfits and lobster fisherman seem to be saying that they are quite pleased that the port was enlarged. For the most part, tranquility still reigns supreme, and the sounds one hears are of low-flying seagulls and lobster cages being unloaded from the local fishing fleet.

Contributing editor Richard Turen owns Churchill and Turen, a vacation-planning firm that has been named to Conde Nast's list of the World's Top Travel Specialists since the list began.