The Deputy Chair
of the CNNS Board,
Åse-Lill Barstad,
is the Tourism
Manager of Visit
North Cape.
The Chair of the
CNNS Board, Harriet
Willassen, is the
Marketing Manager
of the Port of
Tromsø.
CRUICE NORTH 2015
19
The region of
opportunities
Five years ago the cruise ports in Northern Norway and Svalbard made a
decision to form a regional cruise network. By joining forces, they aimed
to strengthen the individual ports. Harriet Willassen (Port of Tromsø) and
Åse-Lill Barstad (Visit North Cape) are two of the people behind the regional
cruise network.
CRUISE NORTH MAGAZINE
Both ports have more than 100 calls per
year. Nearly 120,000 cruise passangers
arrive every summer and slowly but surely
a few in the winter too. However, it’s still
the case that only 15% of cruise traffic
to Norway – and just one percent of the
total European cruise traffic – sails up to
Northern Norway and Svalbard.
It’s not really an exaggeration to say
that the cruise industry has not quite
discovered Northern Norway and
Svalbard yet. In recent years there has
been major focus on opportunities for
turnaround ports in the north, where
major airports with good capacity and
adjacent ports play a key role. What will it
take to gain market share?
“
The trend is towards increasingly
shorter cruises and, on the face of it,
this is a disadvantage for a region that
requires a long voyage to reach. But if we
manage to turn this disadvantage into
an advantage, for example by facili-
tating turnaround operations in Northern
Norway, then opportunities that weren’t
even dreamed of a few years ago will
immediately open up,” say Willassen and
Barstad in agreement. “By exploiting the
time when passengers are being moved
between cruise ships and aircraft, we
can offer shore excursions in summer as
well as winter. There is an abundance of
opportunities to arrange overland trips by
bus. This is something we hope the cruise
lines will take advantage of in the future
because we are convinced that this is a
sensible way to go. Shorter cruises and
even greater experiences is a win-win
situation for the cruise line and the
passenger.”
The proportion shorex sales aboard
the cruise ships have dropped and this
has provided a challenge for some of
the biggest destinations. The number
of passengers is increasing and more
passengers are going on tours. However,
as a percentage of the number on board,
sales are declining. How do you explain
this decline in onboard sales, and what
can the destinations do to meet this
challenge?
“It has become cheaper to go on cruises
and this attracts less affluent groups.
Meanwhile, passengers are far more
enlightened about existing offers than
was the case earlier, but the economic
development in key target markets has
weakened. In order to meet this compe-
tition, it’s a sensible strategy to get
cruise lines, agents and destinations
to cooperate more closely so they can
offer packages that are not available
for purchase in the same combinations
elsewhere.”
The cruise lines and agents are looking
for innovative shorex offers that differ-
entiate the ports. Holland America Line,
for instance, has stated that the shorex
offers at the ports are too similar. What is
CNNS doing to address this?
“CNNS has had a project aimed at
developing new and better shorex offers,
and we are now starting to see the
results of this. Our destinations are
