Tourism disaster: Darwin loses cruise ships to WA
MILLIONS of tourist dollars will now not be coming to the Northern Territory this year with the operators of Darwin based expedition cruise ships confirmed the Top End tourism industry’s worst fears
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Millions of dollars in tourist dollars will now not be coming to the Northern Territory this year with the operators of Darwin based expedition cruise ships confirmed the Top End tourism industry’s worst fears.
They are scrapping Darwin for Broome because of NT Government restrictions.
The Group general manager and director of Queensland company Coral Expeditions Mark Fifield said the company has three cruise ships, the Coral Adventurer / Coral Discoverer / Coral Geographer that were scheduled to cruise from Darwin from April to September.
He said the NT Government’s decision that the company’s ships will only be able to operate out of Darwin if they have no more than 100 people on board, including crew, made their business out of Darwin unviable. The NT Government is also allowing only two cruise vessels in Territory waters at one time.
“The decision means the 5,000 tourists that we coming to Darwin will not be coming, they will be going to Broome instead,” Mr Fifield said.
“We are very disappointed. We have been operating expedition cruise ships out of Darwin for around 25 years and we have invested millions.
“We will relocate to operate out of WA.”
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Mr Fifield said Coral Expedition boats are staffed with Australian based crew and strict COVID testing regulations apply to their Australian passengers.
“We essentially do not have any risk of people getting on our ships with COVID because of the processes they have to go through before boarding,” he said. These are not Ruby Princess ships.
“It is hard to understand what the risk difference is between the Ghan arriving with 500 passengers, a resort with 300 people in it, or a plane arriving with 300 passengers into Darwin is.”
he Tourism Minister, said the directions exist to ensure the Territory has the capacity to manage a potential COVID-19 related emergency.
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