“Table of Eight” – Our occasional column with comments about Chapter events.
(By HSMAInsider, Julie Wernick, jwfranklin1@gmail.com)
What a nice turn out (over 70 people attended) for the Chapter’s luncheon meeting at the Sheraton Fort Lauderdale Airport & Cruiseport Hotel in Dania Beach. Mr. Jean Elie, Senior Cruise Services Manager for Port Everglades, discussed the status of the Port and its cruise growth plans as well as its relationship with the hospitality industry.
Don’t you love meeting new people and learning about them and their companies?
I try to sit with a different group each month. How nice it was to meet Jared and his colleague from Luckey’s Management Group. We should be hearing soon from Luckey’s about some new hotel developments. Jared handles e-commerce for the company. Also at my table was Cindy Chifari with Worth International who told me about Worth’s current publications. In the “small world” department, I learned that she used to work with Cheryl Ricossa (now with Expedia), who I first met many years ago during my Grand Bahama Vacations/Princess Communications tenure, when she was with Hotel Travel Index. Seated next to Cindy were Matt Cooper and Liane Lowy from the New York Times Media group. Also got to meet and chat with Tom Mulroy, GM, of our host hotel and say hello, again, to Gerry McFarland, Director of Sales & Marketing (we worked together when I was at the Chamber and he was with the Renaissance SE 17th Street).
As always, there will be different things that people may remember from a presentation that may apply to their specific hotel/company. But here are a few key points from my notes:
Mr. Elie stated that, overall, 16 million passengers will take a cruise in 2011. This represents a 6.6% increase compared to 2010. Since 1980, there has been an average annual growth rate of passengers of approximately 7.4%.The average length of a cruise is nearly 7 days. Most cruise passengers have an average age of 50+ and more than $40,000 HHI. Cruisers are frequent vacationers and see cruising as part of the travel mix as well as for “special” trips.
Port Everglades is expecting to realize 3.9 million passengers for 2011 with 17 cruise vessels operating from the Port. The Greater Fort Lauderdale area is quite attractive for cruise passengers especially for pre-cruise packages. The Port serves as the number one entrée to the Bahamas and the Caribbean. To attract additional passengers, the Port has expanded their facilities to handle more and larger cruise liners. One result of the larger ships (like the Allure and the Oasis) has been to attract additional international tourists to our area. Some 5000 foreign visitors came, predominantly Brazilians, since the introduction of these new, larger ships. The Port will be continuing to do additional terminal renovations next year. There is more work to be done on post-cruise hotel packages, as well as area tours. (Note: The CVB is working on some new developments in this area to be unveiled at their October 13th meeting.)
Look for the PowerPoint slide presentation from today’s luncheon meeting to be posted on the chapter’s website: hsmaisouthflorida.org in the near future.
Thank you again, Jean for your informative presentation.
P.S. Just a reminder to send in your industry news/updates for the “Around Town” column for the HSMAI-South Florida chapter’s blog, “Scoop”, to jwfranklin1@gmail.com.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment