The Port Authority of Tarragona presents data from two studies on citizen support for cruise ship activity and on the environmental impact of cruise ships docking at the Port
The cruise and sports yachting sector is committed and proactive in moving towards sustainability
This Thursday, October 20, the first 'Day of sustainability and environmental care in cruises and yachts' was held.
The event, presented by Genoveva Climent, Commercial and Business Development Director of the Port Authority of Tarragona, was attended by the manager of Tarragona Turisme, Víctor Franquet responsible for the closing, and with the presence of professionals, relevant expert and executive staff in the cruise and sports yachting sector, as well as in sustainability and environmental care. After the welcome speech, the people in charge of the Port Authority explained the particularities of the cruise activity in Tarragona, which differs substantially from the more well-known models of implementation in the Mediterranean.
Tarragona, model singular
According to the Port Authority, the management of cruise activity in our territory has singularities that make it much more sustainable than the rest. First, the scale of the project in Tarragona has nothing to do with those of the large cruise ports in the Mediterranean.
Tarragona is a very uncongested model. It is an activity that even on a territorial scale has a low impact, if we consider that almost 5 million cruise passengers arrive in Catalonia or that the Costa Daurada has 20 million overnight stays per year, compared to 130,000 passengers in Tarragona. On the other hand, Tarragona is a "territorialized model" in which visitors by sea are not concentrated only in the port city but go to other tourist destinations in the interior and the coast of the region.
Favorable public opinion
The Port of Tarragona has presented the results of a public survey which reflects the state of opinion favourable to cruise activity in Tarragona.
Very low environmental impact
The second data advance shows how the environmental impact of cruise activity on the inhabited areas of the Tarragon coast is almost nil. The study determines what part of the pollution registered by the cabins of the Port and the Network of the Generalitat de Catalunya is attributable to the arrival of cruise ships through a modelling based on the cruise activity of 2019, the year of maximum activity.
