The Positive And Negative Impact Of Cruise Ship Tourism In Tauranga

Written report – positive & negative impacts of cruise ship tourism in Tauranga.

In 2013-14 Tauranga had 83 voyage calls, 25 vessels entering with 83 port days in total. They also had 100 unique passengers and 149,000 passenger port days. Tauranga has established itself as a go-to destination for cruise passengers, with its natural beauty and friendly locals it is not hard to see why. Over the years, Tauranga’s cruise tourism has changed from the 2013-14 statistics, the amount of voyage calls this year has gone down but the amount of unique passengers has gone up to 160,100.

Local business have been able to expand due to the massive amounts of tourists who come and sample local cuisine or check out local merchandise made by various natives

In Auckland, they have many spaces for cruise ships to park, on one occasion I saw two large ships a comfortable space apart with three smaller cruise ships nearby. One of the spaces was next to the Hilton in Auckland, any ship parked in that space had direct entry from passengers to the hotel without walking outside which would be helpful and less stressful for elderly or people in wheelchairs to move around safely without fear of getting lost. This could potentially be applied to Tauranga in the near future with other hotels moving closer to the

At one point in the last year there were three ships in Tauranga’s harbour, the were the Voyager of the Seas which held 3000 people, the Seven Seas Mariner with 700 people on board and Seaborne Odyssey with 462. These three ships were investigated by the international network Friends of the Earth, they found out that all three failed the environmental assessment set by them. Royal Caribbean international had A 's for sewage and water quality, but F for air pollution. The same goes for The Seaborne Odyssey but Regent Seven Seas Cruises is the worst with a C+ for sewage, A for water Quality and again F for air pollution. The F means that they failed to co-operate with Friends of the Earth processes. Having all three cruises in Tauranga running for a day or two would have had bad impacts in Tauranga’s clean air, the average cruise ship realises more sulphur dioxide than 13 million cars. To fix this problem, Friends of the Earth are influencing people to choose their cruise after looking at the environmental effects right now Carnival cruises has the best environmental rating. To limit air pollution at New Zealand ports, more cruises opt to use off shore power while