Cruise Ships Are Coming Back To Halifax
HALIFAX—Halifax will have a full cruise season this year as more than 150 ships call on the port.
The Port of Halifax says its cruise season will begin on April 26 and run until November 5. During that time, 152 cruise ships are scheduled to call on the port.
One of those calls will be from Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, on June 7. The Oasis will be the largest cruise vessel to ever call on Halifax. Disney Cruise Line’s Disney Magic will also call on the port on October 14.
Port spokesperson Lane Farguson says the return of the cruise industry is good news for a port city that hasn’t seen a single cruise ship dock for more than two years.
In March of 2020, a federal ban on most cruise ships entering Canada effectively killed Halifax’s cruise season and ships haven’t returned since. This year, however, cruise lines are allowed to enter the country.
The 152 cruise ship calls will be 85 percent as many as the last cruise season in 2019. That year, cruise ships called on the port 179 times.
In 2020, before Covid-19 forced the cancellation of the entire cruise season, the Port of Halifax was planning for 208 vessel calls. At the time, Farguson said those ships would have brought more than 350,000 tourists. They also would have generated close to $80-million of economic activity.
Direct spending from cruise ship passengers has spin-offs on the Nova Scotia economy, as well. In 2018, the total economic output from the industry neared $172-million, created jobs 950 jobs, $45.5-million in wages, and generated $14-million in taxes.
Farguson says 2022 will still offer a much-needed boost to Halifax and Nova Scotia’s tourism economy but that it will be a rebuilding year in a lot of ways.
“We’re still working with all of the different partners… to make sure that the tour companies are ready and that the buses are ready to go, that people are staffed up,” he says. “But there’s still a couple of details left outstanding and one of those is just the shore experience portion.”
Farguson says there are still a lot of unknowns facing the cruise ship season. The Port is still waiting to learn if passengers will be allowed to take self-guided tours. It’s also unclear how full or empty each ship will be.
When the port was first forced to cancel its cruise season, Captain Allan Gray, the president and CEO of the Port of Halifax, said it could be two to three years before cruise traffic at the port returns to pre-pandemic levels.
Farguson says that estimate still feels accurate.
“There’s still tremendous interest in cruising to the region,” he says. “We’ve always been known as a safe and welcoming destination and that part hasn’t changed; all of those tourism fundamentals still remain in place.
“And people from other parts of the world really want to come and experience what Nova Scotia and what Atlantic Canada has to offer. So, in that sense, we are restarting from a good place.”
Trevor Nichols is the associate editor of Huddle, based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].