Following the 50th MedCruise General Assembly held in Gibraltar, two specialised Working Groups were formed within the Association.
Their aim is to advance the interests of MedCruise member ports and associates, the organisation said.
One group will study the impact of cruising and LNG facilities – how best to serve LNG fuelled vessels. This working group is to be led by MedCruise Director Airam Diaz of Tenerife ports. It will work on defining and monitoring the forthcoming MedCruise studies that were agreed at the assembly.
One task is aiming to understand the precise impact of cruising and how to take advantage of the experience from a number of ports and destinations to ascertain the impact of cruise activities on ports, cities and or destinations.
Another task is to explore how best to develop, in partnership with specific cruise lines or their associations, a project looking at the potential for LNG fuel facilities in cruise ports.
The second group will work on the development of MedCruise’s project – Cruise the Med – aimed at the Chinese and other Asian tourists. This group will be led by Maria Cano, MedCruise vice president from Palamos.
MedCruise has been working since 2015 on a Chinese marketing plan to benefit its ports and destinations by promoting the Mediterranean region’s attractions. This embraces history, culture, nature and gastronomy.
As well as attending various events in Asia, MedCruise has set up a website in Chinese and will now start the second phase of the project to further promote the area to Asians by pointing out the numerous attractions, such as people, culture and language diversities, plus history to make it an attractive cruise destination for Asian people, including Chinese.