Importance of Cruise Ships to Saint John Economy

[00:00:04] I am Mark, the MB Traveler and here we talk about New Brunswick stuff. The episode today is going to focus on the cruise industry in St. John. So let's get started.

[00:00:20] Today I have with me Danielle Timmons. She's in the leadership team of Aquila the Center for Cruise Excellence based in St. John. Welcome, Danielle. Thanks very much, Mark. I'm happy to be here.

[00:00:39] Cruise is a very important thing here in St. John and I just sort of like to start by having you tell a little bit about what the cruise industry, how the cruise industry has evolved here in St. John.

[00:00:56] Absolutely. So we got our first cruise ship in 1989. So quite a few years ago now, I think that would be 35 years ago this year.

[00:01:03] It was actually a storm diversion. I believe the ship was headed for Bermuda and they had a storm so they were leaving from New York. So they thought instead of heading south, they would head north.

[00:01:14] And so we kind of rallied everything together, the fort and Aquila to offer them as great an experience as we could on a few days notice and everything went really well.

[00:01:25] We literally rolled out a red carpet and that they were so impressed with how things went that they decided to start including St. John in their future itineraries.

[00:01:36] And over the years, we've had a number of passengers that have come here on cruise ships. I think last year was probably one of our better years as we're coming out of the COVID situation of being closed down for a couple of years.

[00:01:52] What were some of the factors that contributed to a successful 2023? Well, I think you're right. 2022 was really a restart year after COVID because Canada, the entire country was closed to cruise for 2020 and 2021.

[00:02:08] So 2022 was really a restart year where not all of the buses were back on the road. Not everything had reopened. It was more of a restart.

[00:02:16] 2023 was all systems go. So we were operating at pretty much max capacity. We had our full team back, most of our buses back.

[00:02:27] So it was a really great season that felt quite normal the way things would have felt before COVID. So we were really happy with our 2023 season. And what does it look like for 2024?

[00:02:41] 2024 looks fantastic. The port is saying there are 76 calls this year. We call it 88 and the reason for that is we have a lot of overnight calls.

[00:02:53] And so for us as an operator when a ship is here for two days, we do tours on the first day and tours on the second day. So because we have 12 overnight calls, technically there's 76 ship visits. But for us, that's 88 cruise ship days this year.

[00:03:09] So we're really excited. This is the most overnight we've ever had. And so we're offering some fun evening options for guests like an evening pub crawl or a sunset well watch or a sunset kayak. So we're really looking forward to a great season.

[00:03:27] What are some of the logistical considerations and challenges involved in handling so many cruise passengers here in St. John? What a great question. We do so much of our planning in advance. I know a lot of people think we don't do very much during the winter.

[00:03:45] But we would take on average in a season about 60,000 guests on tour. So for each ship, it depends on the size of the ship, but we could take anywhere from 200 to 2000 on a given cruise ship day.

[00:03:58] And the only way to take 2000 people on tour successfully is to make sure that absolutely everything is organized and preplanned.

[00:04:05] So I would say we have a really great system at Akila where everything is kind of divided. So we have one person who manages all of the bus bookings and arrangements, one who manages all of the tour guides, one who manages all of the suppliers so that everything kind of comes together with all of those pieces and all of the people arranged and ready so that we can kind of carry off a cruise day.

[00:04:31] It's our goal to make it really easy for the cruise lines that visit us and to deliver the guests a great experience and for everything to run smoothly and on time. So it requires a lot of coordination and pre planning.

[00:04:44] What are some of the most popular shore excursions that are being done here in St. John area?

[00:04:51] So I would say some of the most popular ones, the trolley tour is very popular. So that's a tour that kind of shows the highlights of St. John with a stop at the reversing falls rapids in the old city market.

[00:05:02] Our other very popular tours would be tours that go out to the village of St. Martins and they're seeing the sea caves. They enjoy some delicious seafood chowder. They get to stop at the harbor.

[00:05:13] And whale watching is very popular down in St. Andrews. They get to go out and see whales. We have three different boats that we use and Hopewell Rocks.

[00:05:22] Guests love to get out there and walk on the ocean floor. Those would be, we actually have about 30 different excursions, but those would be the kind of highlights most popular.

[00:05:32] We have thousands of passengers that come to St. John every cruise season. Who benefits from these passengers coming off the ship and into the city?

[00:05:45] Quite a few people benefit from this. Obviously the port benefits and Akila benefits, but we have it, you know, we have a team of almost 100. We work with about 60 different businesses in southern New Brunswick and seven communities. So those are bus companies, restaurants, attractions, retail.

[00:06:05] So all of those businesses are benefiting and then only about 50% of people actually take a tour. The other 50% explore on their own. So all of the shops and restaurants uptown are benefiting from guests who are just out and about exploring St. John on their own.

[00:06:22] So there's quite a large and widespread impact to cruise visits. So the economic impact of cruise in St. John area is significant then?

[00:06:34] It is. The last time they did an actual study on it, I believe was 2018 or 2019 and the annual economic impact was about 68 million per year for our region.

[00:06:45] So I would guess that it has gone up since then, but generally speaking, it's going to be in that ballpark about 68 million per year. What's the importance of partnerships and collaboration between the port cruise lines, tourism operators, local businesses and regionally?

[00:07:05] It's incredibly important. We are very fortunate here in St. John to have a port who is very, very tuned in and motivated to really deliver excellence both to the cruise line companies themselves, but also to the guests.

[00:07:23] A lot of ports are very busy ports and ours is too, especially on the cargo and container side. But our port also really, really cares about the guest experience.

[00:07:33] And that makes a huge difference because we are in constant communication with the port in order to make sure that whether it's something out of our control or something in their control, everything is being done with that guest in mind.

[00:07:46] We also work very closely with the province and with Envision St. John, who is our kind of municipal tourism department to really make sure that we are delivering great experiences, but also are there new experiences?

[00:08:01] Are there gaps in product development or what people are looking for and always trying to maximize on those opportunities and also deliver great experience? So what's the future at cruise? It's really great. I saw a webinar this week from Clia, which is cruise line industry association.

[00:08:23] And so they were looking at the next kind of 10 years and what's coming down the road. And so they're not looking just at St. John. They're looking at cruise globally with a focus on North America.

[00:08:33] But from their point of view, cruise in 2023 was higher than 2019. So that's higher than our kind of biggest pre-pandemic year ever.

[00:08:44] And it looks to be on a growth pattern every year for the next 10 years. It's going to be growing more and more. More and more people are cruising.

[00:08:52] They have a very large list of new ships that are being built to meet all of the demand. So from a global cruise point of view, it looks really, really great.

[00:09:03] More ships being built, more people wanting to cruise, more people cruising. And our region especially because we are, it's so easy to get here from New York, which has a great kind of base of people who can drive there to cruise.

[00:09:16] It's really good news for us as well. So how's the center for cruise excellence fit into that future?

[00:09:24] So the center for cruise excellence came into being about 15 years ago. We were told by some of our cruise line clients that the way we did things here in St. John was, was really great.

[00:09:35] And that could we help train some tour operators and other parts of the world to do what we do.

[00:09:40] So 2007 is when we kicked off the center for cruise excellence and we've been going strong ever since. So I believe we train about, I'm going to say 2000 people a year in destinations all over the world.

[00:09:56] A lot of it is done in the Caribbean and Central and South America. So we travel in 2019 before the pandemic, I believe we traveled to about 35 different cruise destinations. This year won't be quite as many because we're everybody, the whole world is still rebuilding.

[00:10:11] But we're traveling to quite a few. We've got great work happening. We just did a workshop this week in Curacao. We're going to Puerto Rico quite a few times this year for training basically all over the world and the Caribbean. So it's really great.

[00:10:25] We train tour guides, tour operators, frontline staff, courts, destinations. Anybody that you can think of that works in a cruise destination helping to kind of raise the level of excellence throughout and it's going really well.

[00:10:39] It's a really busy kind of side to the business. And what's great about it is it's all informed by what we do here in St. John. So we call what we do here in St. John our living lab.

[00:10:49] And so this is where we are kind of operational every day, every year learning all about the business and all the ways that it changes from day to day.

[00:10:58] And then we can take that knowledge and we can really apply it in our training to be those experts as we're training in different destinations around the world. So it's going really well.

[00:11:08] So to a certain degree you put St. John on the map from the standpoint of cruise. I would say so. It's funny because some of the clients that we work with on the training side don't realize they don't even realize where St. John might be.

[00:11:24] We kind of have to explain to them where exactly it is. But our cruise line clients certainly know where it is and we actually work with them quite closely to say, you know, what destiny are you having any trouble at any destinations?

[00:11:37] Is there anybody who needs training or they will refer somebody and say, okay, I think your tour operator needs a bit of work or your tour guides or your frontline teams.

[00:11:46] And we work quite closely with the cruise lines as well to make sure that they're getting the service that they really want in all of their destinations because most of our cruise line clients work in two to four hundred destinations around the world.

[00:12:00] So they they're really they have all the inside knowledge. I always like to finish my podcast interviews by asking a question. What is at least one thing that you like about living in New Brunswick?

[00:12:18] It's such a great question mark and I would say my two top things would be the access to water and nature and the people.

[00:12:27] I live on the St. John River and I'm lucky enough to work next to the Bay of Fundy so every day out of wherever I am, whatever window I'm looking at if I can always see the water, which I absolutely love.

[00:12:38] I've lived in other places where I couldn't see the water and I really missed it. And the other would be the people. I love how down to earth everyone is here how friendly and warm and welcoming.

[00:12:49] Everyone is and again, I've lived in other bigger cities where people aren't as warm and welcoming all the time. So I absolutely love the people and the beautiful place that we are lucky enough to live in. And I agree wholeheartedly with that.

[00:13:04] Thank you so much for your time. And I hope you have a good day. Thank you so much for having me mark. I really appreciate it. Thank you for listening all the way through by doing so.

[00:13:20] You helped my rating on Spotify and you can go to your favorite podcast listening point and like this particular episode and that will help as well. The episode next week is going to be on the greater Moncton Highland Games. I hope you tune in for that as well.

[00:13:39] Again, thank you for listening. Have a wonderful day and a fantastic week.