ACE: Cruising provides economic boost to many communities
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Andy Harmer provides his latest ACE column for Cruise News UK.
It has been really interesting to read some of the recent noise that cruising is making across the Globe. It is interesting, because the stories have been incredibly positive in a year dominated by continued economic woes.
Both Belfast in Northern Ireland and Bar Harbor in the United States have recently announced the huge economic boost to their local economies brought by cruising, and UK ports like Portsmouth and Dover have themselves been talking about the importance of cruising and cruise guests.
Meanwhile we have seen a number of new ship launches, and there are more on the horizon with new ships both for the river cruise market and ocean cruise.
Over the past decade we have seen cruising consistently outperform package holidays, and even in the last couple of years as the UK endured a terrible economic downturn we have seen cruise passenger numbers grow.
There are a number of reasons for this continued growth. Cruise lines offering exciting destinations, a fantastic on-board experience, tremendous value for money, and importantly it is with thanks to travel agents across the UK working hard to introduce cruising to their customers.