Friday, July 22, marks 100 days until Wollongong receives its first cruise ship. It will validate a long-held dream of local councilor and Destination Wollongong board member Leigh Colacino of opening up Port Kembla to cruise liners. This week Destination Wollongong general manager Mark Sleigh took time out with Illawarra Mercury editor Julian O’Brien in a two-part Q&A to explain why he believes this will be “a turning point” for the Illawarra.
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JOB: On October 30, one of Royal Caribbean’s great cruise ships the Radiance of the Seas will be bringing about 2000-2500 passengers in?
MS: Radiance of the Seas has about 2500 passengers and about 700 staff. They’ll be out and about in the local community. We expect somewhere around 40-50 per cent of those will pre-purchase tours to go out and have a look at the fantastic tourist attractions in the region and South Coast. The other 50 per cent will come into the CBD, Lang Park, and we’ll have a welcome celebration there and really set it up to celebrate everything that’s fantastic about the South Coast. We’ll have a South Coast food and wine fair, South Coast indigenous store, art and craft, anything you can think of that’s from the South Coast we’ll be out there celebrating and showcasing to the world.
JOB: To those people out there saying “100 days out to a cruise ship, what does it matter?”, what does it mean?
MS: The cruise ship itself will bring a direct economic benefit of about $897,000 to the region and that’s a fantastic result. I think more importantly, what this has done though, is put Wollongong on the map. We’ll have national media coverage and probably more importantly in this day and age so much social media coverage. The weight that Royal Caribbean brings to that perspective is so real. Royal Caribbean, to put it into perspective, has about 3.6 million followers around the world on Facebook. One post on that morning of the first cruise ship coming into Port Kembla is going to go to 3.6 million people around the world and that really does change perceptions of Wollongong. As well as the social media coverage, you’re not even talking about the tens of thousands of travel agents who sell Royal Caribbean. So that one email that goes out introducing Wollongong as being a new port for Royal Caribbean is going to go global.
JOB: Friday, July 22, and we’ve got a very special visitor in town?
MS: Yes we do. Gavin Smith, who is the senior vice president of Royal Caribbean International, is in town to speak at a lunch. It’s terribly significant. When we began doing the deal (to bring the cruise ship in), we did the deal with Gavin who was based in Sydney and he was the regional vice president of Royal Caribbean. He’s since been promoted to be the second in charge of one of the biggest (tourism) companies in the world. Royal Caribbean has a market “cap” (capital value ) of $16.4 billion and to put that into perspective BlueScope has a market cap of $3.3 (billion). We are talking about a very senior businessman and influential leader in the tourism industry and he’s seen fit to come here and officially launch this 100 days out.
JOB: What does this mean with the growing cruise ship industry, not just here in Australia, but internationally?
MS: Radiance of the Seas coming in for her maiden voyage is a significant event, but it’s only the start of something that could be truly game changing for Wollongong. The global cruise industry is growing over 10 per cent per annum and it has grown by 10 per cent per annum for the last 10 years. There is no more capacity in Sydney Harbour to be able to fulfill that growth. There’s physically nowhere for the ships to park to fulfill that growth and what we have here in Wollongong is a tremendous opportunity to facilitate growth of a segment that can’t be done anywhere else. The State and Federal governments have both set the aspirational target of doubling the overnight visitor economy by 2020. What a tremendous opportunity to be able to facilitate a sector that is growing so quickly and organically. We’re not stealing business off anybody else, we’re actually achieving genuine growth by opening up our port to cruise ships as we move forward. A tremendous opportunity and something that can’t be facilitated anywhere else. Something we can really grab hold of and make game changing for the region.
Read part two of the Q&A in Saturday’s edition or online here.