Late final week, Nice, France, turned the most recent cruise vacation spot to put restrictions on ships, with the purpose of limiting the scale of vessels that go to the picturesque resort metropolis alongside the Cote d’Azur.
Starting July 1, ships carrying greater than 900 folks won’t be permitted to disembark passengers in Good or the neighboring port of Villefranche-sur-Mer.
This and comparable measures are a part of a development that, in recent times, has aimed to assist fashionable vacationer locations lower down on the variety of cruise passengers.
“I do not need floating resorts to drop anchor in entrance of Good,” mentioned Christian Estrosi, Good’s mayor, throughout an announcement concerning the restrictions, as translated from an article that appeared in native newspaper Nice-Matin on Jan. 24. “As for cruises that pollute, that dump their low-cost clientele who eat nothing, however depart their waste behind them, nicely, I say it: These cruises haven’t any place right here.”
The Cruise Traces Worldwide Affiliation — a corporation that represents the collective pursuits of the cruise trade — mentioned in an announcement to TPG that it is stunned by the choice, on condition that no giant ships had been truly scheduled to name on Good in 2025. Solely small vessels are in a position to come into the harbor in Good; bigger ones should head to Villefranche-sur-Mer, the port for Good, about 4 miles away. Simply three giant ships and 34 medium-sized ships are as a consequence of name on Villefranche-sur-Mer in 2025.
The CLIA additionally mentioned the ban and others prefer it “solely serve to stigmatize the cruise trade.”
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Nevertheless, on common, every cruise passenger spends far much less — solely about $40 per day — than different guests to Good, in accordance with native chamber of commerce statistics reported by The Telegraph, making them much less fascinating guests when it comes to income.
Good joins a laundry checklist of different fashionable cruise destinations that have enacted regulations to cut back on the variety of cruisers who go to. They embody Amsterdam; Dubrovnik, Croatia; Mykonos and Santorini in Greece; Key West, Florida; and Venice, which largely led the cost on banning megaships in downtown metropolis areas.
In different areas the place cruises are fashionable, some locations have determined to implement passenger taxes as a substitute of or along with imposing limits on the quantity or dimension of ships that go to.
Though the capital metropolis of Juneau solely just lately enacted restrictions on ship dimension, Alaska ports have, for years, charged per-passenger head taxes on cruisers.
Two nations, Iceland and Mexico, additionally just lately elevated current vacationer taxes and expanded them to incorporate cruise passengers — even those that do not go ashore in port. In early 2025, Iceland switched what beforehand was a $7 per-person payment for in a single day friends within the nation to an $18 per-visit (or, for cruise passengers, per-port) payment, although cruisers keep on their ships at evening as a substitute of on land.
In late 2024, Mexico voted to boost an current vacationer tax from $35 to $42 and begin charging cruise passengers, who had been beforehand exempt. After stress from cruise strains, assortment of the brand new charges — which was purported to have gone into impact initially of 2025 — might be delayed till midyear.
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