No Hobart for Cunard 2012!

Cunard Have decided to mix up their 2012 world cruise itineraries to keep things fresh for their past passengers. Hobart, a world cruise favourite port, has been dropped this year from the world cruise itinerary. Cunard have announced that Hobart will be replaced by other Australian ports, as their passenger ships have visited three times out of four years, and they want to keep things fresh....

This is nothing new really; Cunard does regularly change its world cruise itineraries, it’s just bad news for the local economy. I was reading an article and it advised one visit alone by one of the Queens injected more than $500,000 into the economy. This just shows you the pulling power of Cunard. The blame game has already started, as all are not convinced that Cunard pulled the port for the above reasons, and the real reason was Cunard losing confidence in the port authorities. A former Tasmanian auditor-general David Kirby blamed the Tasmanian Ports Corporation, a private company. He has called on the Tasmanian Government to exercise strong control and direction over the operations at the company and has said " To lose the confidence of the world's most famous cruise line represents the ultimate disgrace for our port of Hobart and a damning indictment on TasPorts and its miserable stewardship record,"

So not to happy then, but in my view rightly so, this is a big cash cow to loose, Many Australians, have a huge interest in the royal family, so the thought of a royal ship coming to port would draw many in. Plus losing the huge injection of revenue into the local economy by the vast amount of cruise passengers coming ashore must be a bitter pill to swallow. Mr Kirby has said strong control was needed to prevent further damage to the port of Hobart and financial harm to the southern community. "TasPorts is steadily dismantling the port, neglecting to maintain assets entrusted to it and is turning away cruise ships by its negative policies," Luckily for Tasmania other cruise ships do still visit and I’m sure Cunard will be back at some point, as many of their clients find Tasmania a very important and interesting place to visit. We will just have to wait and see!