The port of Kusadasi is one of the busiest in the world for Cruise Ships, and as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic took a significant economic beating, as the Cruise Industry suffered heavily during the restrictions on travel, over the last 18 months.
Now with global restrictions easing it’s set to become a key player in the ‘Recovery Operation’, and has already welcomed its first Cruise Ship into Ege Port, which carried along with it 450 tourists, mostly from Russia and the surrounding countries.
July and August saw a huge increase in interest with around 30% of the Cruise Industry back in operation again, but the biggest gains are being seen for 2022, which could mean a huge windfall globally and to the local economy. If you take Kusadasi for example, they are currently envisaging up to 750,000 tourists being offloaded from approx. 650 vessels but this is bound to increase even further once Greece opens the sea border gates.
General Manager of Ege Port Aziz Gungor mentioned in a local press conference recently that ‘when we look at 2022 bookings we see a very serious demand for Turkey, and if all goes well this may even be our best year in Cruise Tourism. Our hopes and expectations for 2022 are quite high.’
In terms of growth beyond 2022, the mega port project of Galaport, which has received an investment of around $1.7bn, should increase visitor numbers to around 1.5m, although early indications show that the total number could increase to 7 million+ tourists, all investing in the local area, once they are here.
Of course, everything depends heavily on the next few months, the continued vaccination programme, the booster vaccination and the continued investment in the Industry but the outlook looks very strong.
Image courtesy of Alonso Reyes.
