Holiday Dream returns

Local stake holders in the Cruise Tourism Industry were smiling all the way to the bank when Spanish Cruise liner Holiday Dream docked at Port Kingstown last Thursday after a ten week absence.{{more}}

Even though the Cruise season ended in late April, Holiday Dream had been slated to visit Port Kingstown every week until January 2008. After its May 10 visit, stakeholders were informed by ship’s agent Coreas and Company that the ship was diverted to Grenada and would not be returning to St Vincent even though it would still maintain its weekly Mayreau visits.

Tour bus operators, tour guides and taxi drivers were devastated by the news which meant that what they had seen as a source of a guaranteed weekly income had suddenly dried up. The ship’s agent said being an older and slower ship, Holiday Dream took too long to get to Port Kingstown, and this caused scheduling problems, hence, it was prudent to start going to Grenada.

On Saturday July 14 during Coreas annual appreciation cruise for the company’s tours division, persons present were told: ‘Holiday Dreams will be back’. However the situation is a ‘Catch 22’ situation in that the ship will only come to Port Kingstown when it is unable to dock in Mayreau due to bad weather. Although tour guides are happy, they are still apprehensive that they will have to wait until the last minute to know whether the ship will come or not.

Holiday Dreams is the Sister ship of the Blue Moon which it replaced on the Caribbean circuit in April of this year, their home port is in Spain and they are part of the Pull Man Cruises fleet. Pull Man Cruises was acquired by Royal Caribbean Cruise lines last year.