Union Ministry floats national cruise tourism policy draft

The government's plan also proposes building cruise circuits by integrating luxury train journeys with river or coastal cruises.

A board to facilitate ease of business, upgrading of existing ports, and a database of cruise agencies are among the steps mooted by the Union Ministry of Tourism in its draft of National Strategy for Cruise Tourism released Tuesday. The move comes after meetings of the G20 Tourism Working group pointed at the potential of cruise tourism to be a lucrative sector.

While there have been concerted attempts by the Centre to spruce up cruise tourism in India, with an action plan being chalked out in 2017, the sector still has a long way to go. With 12 major and 200 minor ports along a coastline stretching 7,500 km across the west and the east, and a network of more than 20000 kilometers long 110 navigable waterways connecting around 400 rivers, the potential for cruise tourism in the country has led the ministry to chalk out a plan with stakeholders like the Ministry of Shipping and Ports and other agencies to upgrade facilities across the country.

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In its draft strategy, the ministry said that the National Cruise Tourism Board will comprise of the stakeholders from line ministries, states and industry players and build a single window approval system for cruises.

Apart from identifying new cruise ports that could be upgraded to build infrastructure for deep sea cruises, coastal cruises, river cruises and yachts, the plan will also focus on identifying existing ports and river terminals along the state coastlines and river banks which could be used to develop additional cruise infrastructure facilities of jetties and terminal. The plan also proposes building cruise circuits by integrating luxury train journeys with river or coastal cruises.

To promote domestic cruise tourism, the plan suggests increasing state and inter-state coastal cruise vessels, ports offering coastal cruises along both west coast and east coast, destinations connected through coastal cruise tours, overnight coastal cruise tourists each year and number of coastal cruise room nights.

To attract international cruises, the ministry of tourism has proposed to target 1000 world class vessels and an annual footfall of a million. The ministry also plans to ensure a berthing draft of 10.5 metres and a year-around season of deep sea port operations.

A national inventory of tour agents and destination management specialists in each destination for handling the complete cruise tourism value chain will be created, the draft suggests.

On the sidelines of the final G20 meeting at Panaji, tourism minister G Kishen Reddy released the draft, and an event to explore the sector was held which saw the attendance of several G20 delegates, the ministry said.