Home » News » CLIA MD Joel Katz: “we need to be ahead of the game or we’ll miss out”

24 May, 2018

CLIA MD Joel Katz: “we need to be ahead of the game or we’ll miss out”

In case you missed the boat on this one, earlier this month the cruise industry got a massive shout out in the federal budget.

Sorry for that awful pun, it’s Thursday and we’re tired.

giphy (9)

According to a statement from the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, Steven Ciobo, the cruise sector contributes $2.7 billion to the Australian economy each year and is growing rapidly.

“This Budget will fund work to identify solutions to the lack of berthing infrastructure in Sydney, Australia’s cruise gateway, ensuring our share of the cruise ship market continues to grow,” said Ciobo.

To celebrate the launch of CLIA’s Australian Crusie Industry Source Market Report, and this new commitment to solving berthing issues, we thought we’d check in with CLIA Managing Director Joel Katz.

Part two of this interview will be published tomorrow, along with the findings of this year’s report, so stay tuned, people!

Katz told us that Australia has the highest market penetration in the world when it comes to cruising, with one in 18 Australians choosing a cruise based holiday.

“That really demonstrates that Australian travellers just love cruising. They see the benefit of cruising, they enjoy the cruising lifestyle, and more and more Australians are cruising all the time,” Katz told us.

“The challenge we have here in this part of the world, in particular, is the capacity constraints. We don’t have the capacity to accommodate the ships that want to come down here.”

This challenge becomes particularly amplified when we take into account that almost 90 per cent of Aussie passengers cruise locally in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.

“In order for cruise lines to deploy ships in this region they’ve obviously got to put them somewhere. Between October and March, which is peak cruise season, Sydney is full. The overseas passenger terminal is full and ships that don’t fit under the harbour bridge just can’t come here,” he said.

“We’ve been working with government at all levels to really hit home the message that getting the infrastructure right is critical.”

“The only way we can future proof cruise tourism in this region is to make sure we have the capacity to grow with the number of cruise ships that come down here.”

“We see this [the government’s new commitment] as a recognition from the federal government that something needs to happen.”

“We’ve been engaging with the state government for a while now on identifying options for additional berthing capacities for the harbour bridge and the government is working through that, we’re expecting some announcements on that later this year and this is another positive step forward.”

Katz said that while the new commitment is encouraging, it is crucial that the infrastructure keeps up with the industry’s growth.

“We’re world leading, our growth levels are on par if not better than some of the most established cruise markets in the world,” he said.

“If we want to be able to maintain growth and compete with our neighbours up in Asia who are building infrastructure and doing everything they can to attract cruise ships we need to make sure we’re ahead of the game or otherwise we’ll miss out.”

Advertise with us

Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

berthing clia Joel Katz Sydney Harbour