Halifax On Track For Record-Breaking Cruise Season In 2023
HALIFAX – Halifax is set to have one of its busiest cruise seasons ever in 2023.
This year, the Port of Halifax expects 191 cruise ships to call on the city’s port carrying an estimated 325,000 guests.
That gets the Port close to its best-ever year for vessel calls. The only time the city saw more cruise ships was in 2018 when 196 called on Halifax. However, Port spokesperson Emily Richardson says it’s possible the total number of cruise passengers that visit the city could break the 2019 record of 323,709.
“We won’t know for sure until the end of the season, as we can lose calls due to inclement weather and other unforeseen circumstances, but there’s a lot of potential for a record-breaking season. This ties back into [there being] bigger ships, more people, and fewer small ships,” Richardson says.
One of the highlights of the season will be a visit from Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas on May 31. It’s the fourth-largest cruise ship in the world, as long as 15 tennis courts, as high as a 20-storey building, and capable of carrying 5,400 passengers and about 2,400 crew.
“It really is like a floating city, with that many people,” Richardson says.
Richardson says the strong upcoming cruise season is good news for many of the city’s tourism operators who rely on cruise traffic.
Last year was the first time cruise ships could call on Halifax since the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the cruise industry in 2020.
That year, the Port was planning for 208 cruise ship calls. Those ships would have brought more than 350,000 tourists to Halifax and generated close to $80 million of economic activity.
Twenty-twenty-two was a decent cruise season – Richardson says some tourism operators had their busiest-ever season – but vessel calls were down and many ships weren’t operating at full passenger capacity.
Richardson says that looks like it has changed this year.
“The cruise lines like to run full,” she says. “This year we expect them, if at all possible, to run full.”
Despite the less-than-full ships, Richardson says the biggest challenge for the city’s tourism operators last year was meeting demand.
“Last year labour definitely was one of the biggest challenges, to support the volume coming in on these cruise ships. This year, we’re hopeful that the tourism agencies have regained some of the employees that they lost,” she says.
She explains that the two-year drought in cruise jobs meant many returning, seasonal workers moved on to other jobs. However, based on the success of last year’s season, she says agencies are hopeful people will want to return.
Richardson says it’s too early to tell what the economic impact of last year’s cruise season will be but she expects it to be similar to pre-Covid numbers.
“The demand isn’t going down and the economic impact is coming with that,” she says.
Trevor Nichols is Huddle’s editor, based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].