|
 The report showed that 12 million passengers took cruise vacations worldwide in 2006, with U.S. passengers making up 78 percent of those travelers. Seven ships were added last year, and about 30 more are slated to be built by the end of 2011 as cruise lines anticipate there will be enough demand to fill some 80,000 new berths.
Florida -- home base for Carnival Corp. and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
-- led with nearly 56 percent of all embarkations and the top three cruise ports in 2006. The Port of Miami, Port Canaveral and Port Everglades accounted for more than 4.4 million passenger embarkations, the study showed.
The Port of Galveston in Texas ranked fourth with 617,000 embarkations, an increase of 16 percent from the year before.
New York ranked sixth with 536,000 embarkations in 2006, up 45 percent, with the opening of the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.
The port in Honolulu also showed substantial growth, with passenger departures reaching 318,000, a jump of 34 percent.
Those increases were in contrast to a nearly 77 percent drop in passenger embarkations in New Orleans, whose port was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. About 72,000 cruise passengers began their trip in New Orleans in 2006, down from 308,000 the year before, the report showed.
Other ports that saw a drop in embarkations were Boston, down 22 percent with 62,000, and San Diego, down 23 percent with 180,000.
The study was done by Exton, Pa.-based Business Research and Economic Advisors, which gathered and analyzed data for the Fort Lauderdale-based CLIA.
[Associated Press]
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed. |
