Canada courting cruise lines for St. Lawrence River sailings

By Michelle Baran

Despite hesitancy from the cruise lines, Canada still thinks it can sway more and bigger ships into offering itineraries along its scenic St. Lawrence River.

Destination Quebec, in conjunction with the Cruise the Saint Lawrence Association, an organization created to promote the St. Lawrence River to international cruise lines, hosted a press luncheon in New York last month to raise awareness about the attractiveness of its destinations.

The two organizations noted that for East Coast ports, the St. Lawrence River offers easy access to a number of popular sites in the Quebec region, including Montreal and Quebec City, as well as lesser-known islands, fjords and port towns, including Saguenay, Sept-Iles, Gaspesie and Iles-de-la-Madeleine.

But despite the region's efforts to court cruise lines, the Quebec Port Authority said in a statement in May that it expects to welcome approximately 80,000 cruise passengers this year, down from 102,254 passengers last year.

"This drop compared to 2010 is due to Costa Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line restructuring their routes and dropping the St. Lawrence from their itineraries," Mario Girard, president and CEO of the Quebec Port Authority, said in a May statement.

"It has happened in the past that some cruise ship lines come a few years in a row, go elsewhere for a certain time and then come back," Girard added.

Part of the problem, according to Quebec tourism representatives, is that cruise lines see the region as primarily a fall foliage destination.

During a panel discussion at the Cruise Canada New England Symposium in New York last month, cruise executives said that demand for cruises in Canada and New England beyond the fall foliage season just isn't strong enough.

"We have to get beyond this idea that the colors of the leaves is the only reason to come," Dan Hanrahan, CEO of Celebrity Cruises, said at the symposium. "But the cruise industry can't do that. We can sell the brand and the itinerary, but we're not the ones to convince people to come beyond that."

That's where the government of Quebec is hoping to step in and create the demand, first through investment. In September, the City of Baie-Comeau was granted $4 million from the Support Initiative for International Cruise Development provided for under Canada Economic Development's Community Diversification program. The municipality intends to use the funds to build a maritime pavilion and pedestrian walkway for cruise passengers stopping in Baie-Comeau.

Through that kind of investment, coupled with an ongoing marketing campaign, the goal is to quadruple the number of cruise passengers along the St. Lawrence River, from the 111,977 that sailed through in 2006 to close to 400,000 by the year 2014.