By HENRY EMPEÑO | 

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT — Eyeing more tourism receipts here under its budding cruise ship tourism program, the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) now plans to develop a cruise ship-handling protocol for better management and sustainability of cruise ship arrivals.

SBMA Chairman and Administrator Wilma T. Eisma said she had instructed the agency’s Cruise Ship Committee to produce a manual or guidebook after the Subic Freeport recorded 30 cruise ship arrivals here since February last year.

“We have been successful so far in carving a new tourism niche in Subic with this booming cruise industry, and in order to sustain this growth we have to incorporate best practices into a structured system,” Eisma said on Friday.

She added that the SBMA needs to institutionalize cruise ship-handling “so that we can provide quality service and effective assistance to the passengers and crew of the visiting vessels, as well as their ship agents.”

Figures from the SBMA Tourism Department showed a total of 19 cruise ship arrivals here last year, with the Italian-flagged Costa Atlantica operated by Costa Crociere setting the record at 14 visits.

Three other cruise lines also put Subic in their itinerary: Star Cruises, which sent its liner SuperStar Gemini to Subic twice; Royal Caribbean International with one visit of its Ovation of the Seas; and Dream Cruises, which sent its ship World Dream twice.

Each arrival reportedly brought in an average of 3,500 tourists who disembarked in Subic and then toured various destinations in the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, Olongapo City, Clark Freeport, and Zambales and Bataan.

This year 11 cruise ship arrivals have been recorded in Subic so far: seven for World Dream and four for Costa Atlantica, which  last arrived here on May 16 with 2,000 passengers and 800 crew and officers.

Eisma also said that the SBMA’s successful initiative to develop  complementation programs with nearby communities to offer curated experiences to tourists now make it necessary to develop a protocol for handling cruise ship arrivals.

Last year, the Central Luzon Regional Development Council cited the SBMA for developing Subic into a premier cruise ship destination in the country with more than P85-million worth of local business generated in the first eight months alone.

SBMA Senior Deputy Administrator for Port Operations Marcelino Sanqui, who is chairman of the SBMA Cruise Ship Committee, said the planned cruise ship handbook will contain step-by-step procedures from the moment a cruise ship enters Subic Bay, drops anchor at Alava Wharf, disembarks its passengers, and so forth.

The handbook will inform tourists of the attractions in and around Subic Bay area, policy do’s and don’ts in Subic, road directions and emergency numbers, Sanqui added.

 

TOP PHOTO: SBMA employees line up along Alava Wharf to welcome the arrival of the cruise ship Costa Atlantica last week.  (Photo by Dante Salvaña)