Cruise ship season kicks off in Vancouver today

Posted: April 9, 2018 | 0 Comments

Princess Cruises’ Star Princess docked at Canada Place this morning, marking the start of what is expected to be one of the biggest cruise ship seasons for Vancouver in years.

The 950-foot-long (290-metre-long) vessel carries 3,100 passengers and 1,205 crew and is one of the largest vessels to serve Vancouver’s cruise ship port. It will be making two 15-day roundtrip journeys to the Hawaiian Islands today and again on April 29, with a sailing to Los Angeles in between on April 19, before commencing its schedule of regular sailings to Alaska.

But the cruise ship season in Vancouver, which mainly goes to Alaska, will not pick up until the last week of April. Overall, from now until mid-October, 830,000 passengers on 288 calls, on more than two dozen ships, are expected to pass through the gates at Canada Place, marking a 3% increase in passenger volume over the previous year.

However, this falls short of the one million annual passenger figures recorded up until approximately a decade ago, before Seattle constructed its own cruise ship facilities to compete with a market that Vancouver has dominated for decades.

Each vessel that makes a call at Canada Place creates more than $2 million in local economic activity through tourist spending and the cruise line’s expenditures on supplies.

New to Vancouver this year is Holland America Line’s recently built MS Nieuw Amsterdam, the cruise ship line’s second largest vessel. The vessel will make its inaugural call to Vancouver, the new homeport, on April 30 and serve 100,000 passengers over 24 roundtrip sailings this season.

“Holland America was the first cruise line to call the new Canada Place cruise terminal on April 28, 1986,” said Robin Silvester, President and Chief Executive Officer of Port Metro Vancouver, in a statement. “We value our partnership with Holland America Line very highly, and look forward to continuing to build on this great relationship for many years to come.”

As well, the Le Soleal, the sister ship of Compagnie Du Ponant’s Le Boreal and L’Austral vessels, will be making its inaugural call on June 18. And after an 11-year hiatus, Crystal Cruises is returning to Vancouver this year with Serenity making eight sailings from Vancouver, bringing 13,000 passengers to the city.

The Disney Wonder, one of the four vessels on Disney Cruise Line, is also making a return to Vancouver this season with 14 sailings beginning on May 23. Other cruise lines that will call Vancouver its homeport this season include Celebrity Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises, Regent Seven Seas, Royal Caribbean International, and Silversea Cruises.

This year, Canada Place will be celebrating its 30th anniversary. The pier was built in time for Expo ’86 and used as the World’s Fair’s Canada Pavilion, with passengers shuttled from False Creek to Canada Place directly by a special SkyTrain shuttle.