San Diego cruise market is back again — and so is Mexico as top destination – The San Diego Union
It wasn’t all that many years ago that Mexican seaside ports had become the bane of San Diego’s once flourishing cruise market, as fears surrounding growing violence chased ships away and ho hum destinations failed to excite seafaring vacationers.
But as is often the case with the cyclical popularity of cruise destinations, the Mexican Riviera has regained its appeal and, by extension, so, too, has San Diego as a port of call for departing and arriving cruises.
Now in the midst of its 2018-19 cruise season, the Port of San Diego is expecting 295,000 passengers to pass through its two cruise ship terminals on their way to not only such Baja California ports as Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada, but also more distant destinations like the Panama Canal and the Hawaiian islands.
By 2020, the projected number of passengers is forecast to jump to 340,000. While that’s a sizable drop from the 2008 peak of almost a million passengers, it’s nearly double the volume from as recently as four years ago, when the number of San Diego passengers reached a low of 183,000.
San Diego port officials say that heightened attention to security by Mexican port leaders, in combination with a healthy economy and much improved offerings by the ports themselves, have helped revive the once flagging cruise market.
As evidence of its growing cachet, the Disney Cruise Line has been returning to San Diego with more cruises each year after first dipping its rudder in the water in 2012. And, in a major turnaround for San Diego, Carnival Cruise Line will return to San Diego next year after a seven-year absence.
“First and foremost, the perception of violence is not as prevalent as before,” said the Port of San Diego’s maritime director, Joel Valenzuela. “Violence still occurs but the actual port areas are not affected, and the Mexican government made an effort to make sure the ports are safe and worked directly with the cruise lines to regain their confidence.
“The ports have also heard loud and clear that you guys have to up your game and refresh the destinations, to try to differentiate yourselves so that when people get off at Ensenada and Cabo they don’t feel like it’s the same place.”
To that end, Ensenada in recent years has spent $785,000 refreshing its port with an improved promenade that includes a bridge connecting the embarcadero to the cruise ship terminal, plus it’s added an interactive “dancing” water fountain. The port also is offering more appealing land-side excursions like visits to the Valle de Guadalupe wine country and craft breweries.
Carnival, which operates cruises to Mexico five days a week out of its Long Beach home port, will be offering at least 10 new sailings out of San Diego starting next December. It is also partnering with Ensenada on a still undisclosed port project “that will provide a great destination experience,” said Carnival executive Fred Stein.
Carnival, he said, is returning to San Diego, in part, because it has more ships in its fleet to deploy since leaving in 2012, and San Diego’s port also gives the line more flexibility to offer longer voyages beyond trips to the Mexican Riviera.
At the time Carnival decided in 2011 to pull out of San Diego, though, it cited “weaker relative financial performance” in the local market. The potential for growth, though, now appears to be much more promising.
“We’re looking at the California market in general, with California being the fifth biggest economy in the world,” said Stein, vice president of revenue planning and deployment for Carnival. “So it’s a big market and one we believe is underserved. And San Diego is also a great vacation destination in and of itself, so what better place to start your vacation in a vacation destination.”
While Stein would not say whether Carnival will be returning to San Diego for subsequent cruise seasons, Valenzuela said he is confident the line will be back given its growing fleet and the need for another port for deploying cruises to Mexico and beyond.
Seven of the line’s 10 San Diego cruises that have already been announced will be to Mexico, which accounts for 65 percent of the itineraries across all lines for the coming 2019-20 season. That’s a big reversal from 2013 when voyages to Mexico represented just 37 percent of San Diego’s cruise business.
Also offering a calendar dominated by Mexico cruises is Disney, which has helped buoy San Diego’s cruise market in recent years. For the current season, it will have 24 San Diego calls, but that number will dip to 16 the following year. That’s due in part to Disney testing new ports and destinations in preparation for three new ships it will be adding to its fleet, said Valenzuela.
“I asked them, what the heck, you’ve been saying San Diego is on your growth horizon and now you’re going to 16 calls in 19-20,” Valenzuela said. “They answered us and said that what they’re doing is redeploying some calls to test new markets so that when the new vessels come they’ll deploy them appropriately but San Diego is already on their growth list.”
Representatives of the Disney cruise line did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls seeking comment.
Holland America, long a steady presence in San Diego, remained throughout the tumult that roiled Mexico and the Southern California cruise industry earlier in the decade and has grown its itineraries here to close to 40 calls.
As a measure of its commitment to the San Diego market, it will be bringing one of its newer ships, the 2,650-passenger Koningsdam, to San Diego in 2020. The larger ship can accommodate about 500 more passengers than the other Holland America vessels that call on San Diego.
“What’s helping with Mexico is really the security concerns calming down, and that’s generating more natural demand from our guests,” said Beth Bodensteiner, senior vice president of revenue management and deployment with Holland America. “The industry (ship) capacity is increasing in general, and we’re looking where to spread that capacity, so during that winter, fall and spring time it gets divided between Mexico and the Caribbean.”
While the Mexican Riviera has long been a staple for driving San Diego’s cruise business, Holland America’s itineraries out of San Diego tend to be much more diverse and even include a 51-day voyage to the South Pacific, a 30-day “Incan Empires” journey to South America and a 28-day trip that stops in Hawaii and Tahiti.
“For us, San Diego is not just about the Mexican Riviera,” Bodensteiner said. “We’ve increased our capacity to Panama Canal over the last couple of years, and we’ve seen fantastic demand for that.”
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