Cancun, QR. The island will close in 2021 with a total of 354 cruise ships and just over 600,000 tourists, after the reactivation of the industry since last June.
In last month’s cutoff (from the June-November period) the cozumel island It already reported 230 berths and a total of 403,994 passengers, that is, an average of 1,756 tourists per ship, just over half of the 3,000 that on average mobilized these ocean liners before the Covid-19 pandemic.
For the remainder of the year, from December 1 to 31, the island will attract a total of 124 cruise ships and an estimated 217,744 more passengers – at a rate of 1,756 per ship -, thus closing the year with more than 98 berths for the month above and maintaining the upward trend of ships captured month by month since the industry was reactivated, according to the statistical report of the Comprehensive Port Administration of Quintana Roo.
This after, in June of this year, after 15 months of total drought, Cozumel It resumed activity with only four boats, increasing the following month with 14 and by August it reported 29 arrivals. During September it increased again to 41 ships, and in October it closed with 53, plus the 98 for the whole of November.
The sustained growth of the island is due to the normalization of arrivals of the five main shipping companies that docked on the island since before the pandemic (Norwegian Cruise Line, Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean, MSC and Disney Cruise Line), in addition to the incorporation of new ones such as the British Virgin Voyages, a subsidiary of the Virgin Atlantic airline, with its cruise ship Sacarlet Lady with capacity for 2,770 passengers and 1,160 crew members, for which a pre-Hispanic cultural welcome was presented.
Recovery
The more than 600,000 cruise passengers with which the island will close the year still represent levels well below that registered in 2020, the year in which despite the pandemic the island managed to receive 1 million 132,101 passengers during the first three of the year, since Starting in March, shipping companies canceled all their itineraries worldwide.
These numbers mean that the island captured only 53% of the 1.1 million travelers who arrived in Cozumel in 2020 during the second half of 2021, that is, the difference downwards compared to one year and another is still 47 percent. hundred.
Despite this, Cozumel is once again, thanks to these figures, the national leader in attracting cruise ships. The most up-to-date statistics from the Ministry of Communications and Transportation establish that while in five of the 17 Pacific ports (Ensenada, Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, Vallarta Port, Manzanillo) between January and October of this year, only a total of 85 cruises were captured, in that same period in Cozumel the arrival of 133 ocean liners was already reported.
In that same period, the entire Pacific region of the country, with only five of its 17 active ports so far, captured 138,184 passengers, while Cozumel captured 228,454 travelers.
In 2019, the island also known as Isla de las Golondrinas closed with 4.5 million cruise passengers; This volume of travelers represented just over half of the 8.9 million tourists that arrived nationwide.
While Ensenada, Saint Charles, Cabo San Lucas, La Paz, Pichilingual, hidden port, Loreto, Santa Rosalía, Guaymas, Topolobambo, Mazatlan, Vallarta Port, Manzanillo, Zihuatanejo, Acapulco, Huatulco As a whole, Puerto Chiapas received 950 ships throughout 2019, 1,366 ships docked in Cozumel alone, which means that in that year the island captured 416 more cruise ships than the entire Pacific region of the country.
Mahahual, the other cruise port to the south of Quintana Roo and the second in importance at the national level, closed 2020 with 455,179 passengers; 1.1 million travelers stopped visiting it, taking into account that in 2019 the pier attracted 1.4 million cruise tourists. Both ports stopped attracting 4 million 587,008 tourists during 2020.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx