One of the few exceptions, Craig Milan, a consultant and Royal Caribbean veteran, presented a keynot

“After what we’ve heard today, I can’t imagine why any community would want to be a cruise port.” So spoke Gustavo Arroz, president of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, ICOMOS, which seeks to protect historic and archaeological sites around hotels in florence italy the world.
What we had heard last Thursday, February 7, were mostly negative findings and opinions about the effects hotels in florence italy of large cruise ships on historic ports. The three-day international “Harboring Tourism” symposium hotels in florence italy was turning out to be a cruise-line roast. That wasn’t the original hotels in florence italy plan. The World Monuments Fund (WMF) had convened hotels in florence italy the 150 or so attendees with support from the National hotels in florence italy Trust for Historic Preservation and the Preservation Society of Charleston, host of the conference. WMF didn’t hotels in florence italy want it to be a roast, but an apparent boycott hotels in florence italy by most pro-cruise invitees left it that way.
The venue, Charleston, South Carolina, was no coincidence. As I reported hotels in florence italy last year , the charming, historic city has been locked in an increasingly nasty fight over a proposed cruise ship pier and its continuing role as home port for the Carnival Fantasy. Little has changed, hotels in florence italy except for a flock of lawsuits. Last week pier opponents attended; pier supporters, including Mayor Joseph Riley, mostly stayed away.
One of the few exceptions, Craig Milan, a consultant and Royal Caribbean veteran, presented a keynote Wednesday night, Feb. 6, about cruise ship trends. The industry is big: Some 20 million passenger embarkations annually.  Among his key points was the customary cruise-line claim about economic benefit to port destinations, on the order of $140 per passenger.
His presentation sounded a few tone-deaf notes, as when describing the colossal new Oasis-class ships. High as a 20-story building, a fifth of a mile long, one ship can carry 5200 passengers and 2200 crew. When one of these behemoths casts its mighty shadow across your pier, you are seeing one city about to meet your own. Large though they are, Milan assured us they do not feel crowded on board, because “the passengers are so well segmented.” He moved on, leaving his audience of heritage preservationists likely thinking, “And what happens when 5,000  passengers descend on our historic district? How well segmented are they then?” Yet Oasis, Milan said, represents the industry trend. Ships will continue to get larger.
Milan took no questions and departed, leaving further defense of the cruise lines to the symposium’s hotels in florence italy only other industry representative, Jamie Sweeting, Royal Caribbean’s environmental man. Sweeting was expecting a tough sail into headwinds of criticism. He was right.
From what subsequent speakers said over the next two days, the biggest cruise-ship concerns come down to numbers: Too big, too many passengers, too little money left on land, too much air pollution, too much disruption in the home ports.
According to Milan’s figures, every week on average the cruise industry takes about 400,000 vacationers out to sea.  That’s hotels in florence italy an excellent place for them, as I pointed out in my own remarks. The panel I moderated (disclosure: my expenses were paid) looked hotels in florence italy at what happens when these megaships come into port, especially into small historic cities like Charleston or Venice.
Dr. Ross Klein of Memorial University, Newfoundland, a renowned industry gadfly, cited Dubrovnik , Croatia and Key West , Florida as two small ports suffering from cruise overkill. The cramped medieval old city of Dubrovnik, he said, now gets a million or so passengers a year, deposited by 469 ship visits. By 2004, Key West was also getting a million passengers hotels in florence italy a year, up from 132,840 hotels in florence italy in 1990.  Many Key Westers are pressing hotels in florence italy for a rollback, but those who benefit from the high traffic resist. (Think taxis and T-shirt shops.) Both cities have economic studies that refute the sunny numbers presented by cruise lines.
According to Klein, local tour operators hired to take passengers around on land get less than half what the passengers actually pay. The discrepancies between industry and shore-side figures hotels in florence italy may lie in the cruise companies’ mastery hotels in florence italy of “vertical integration,” meaning that, as a passenger, a big chunk of the money you spend on excursions or at recommended stores on land goes right back to the cruise line.
Kristian Jørgensen of Fjord Norway said communities should do their own research sooner, not later. He showed how soaring cruise traffic hotels in florence italy has added crowding and air pollution to Norway’s once-pristine fjords. Visits to the historic resort village of Geiranger can multiply its daytime population by a factor of 40, to 10,000—visitors who nevertheless leave little money in their giant ships’ wake, according to research done by universities in Bergen and Stavanger. .
Jørgensen said one reason for the increase was Norway’s consistent showing hotels in florence italy at the top of National Geographic’s destination hotels in florence italy stewardship surveys from 2004 to 2010. “We weren’t ready,” he said. “I don’t think Norway would score as high today.”
An extensive study funded hotels in florence italy by the Inter-American Development Bank found numbers very different from those presented by Craig Milan the night before. Evaluation of cruise hotels in florence italy ship costs and benefits to ports in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Belize revealed net on-land income of only $67.40 per passenger, versus $934 to $1260 per average land-based vacationer staying nine days. (Download a copy of the study at the Center for Responsible Travel hotels in florence italy .)
In Victoria, B.C. economist Brian Scarfe hotels in florence italy reported that the industry exaggerated its economic benefit claims, that cruise ships contributed less than what it cost the local economy to harbor them—$24 million in, versus $28 million out. New emissions reductions may get it down to a break-even, as health costs and premature deaths decline.
South Carolina economist Harry Miley basically concurred, hotels in florence italy saying hotels in florence italy his review of more than a dozen impact studies showed an average overnight visitor to be spending 14 times more in the community than a cruise passenger. (A point to note: Dr. Miley’s work was commissioned by the cruise-skeptical Historic Charleston Foundation.)
In Valetta, Malta, said Italian urban planner Paolo Motta, the European Union spent 17 million euros to improve access from the cruise piers into the historic old town, enough to serve two ships at once. “The return to the local economy was absolutely nothing.” Now traffic has climbed to six ships a day, facilities are again overwhelmed, and Maltese officials are considering ways to pull back the welcome mat.
For me, Venice was the real shocker. I knew the cruise load there was high, but 2.5 million passenger visits hotels in florence italy annually to a city whose population is dropping past 50,000? “You are arriving Venice, you are getting squeezed like a sardine,” said Motta. “On some summer hotels in florence italy days, 25,000 people coming by sea.”
It changes hotels in florence italy the city, Motta emphasized. “They are losing all the traditional skills and handicrafts.” Shops sell false Venetian masks, made in Taiwan. Prosecco yields to Coca Cola. This is what s called loss of “intangible heritage”—the customs and knowledge and traditions that give a place its cultural flavor.
In Charleston, my cabbie had paused to wave a car at a corner in front ahead of him. How much would traffic have to thicken before he would instead have raced to close the gap? How long before local artisans would give up their distinctive basket weaving and turn to selling cheaper wares from Asia? Thus poorly managed tourism fouls its nest.
Only Valparaiso, Chile delivered a favorable report, in part since this hilly, sizable port city hosts only 50 ships a year, according to city heritage manager Paulina Kaplan. She called the arrival of a ship an “urban event,” welcomed by locals and land-based tourists alike who enjoy watch a virtual moving building take its place. Someone observed, “Maybe that’s because Valparaiso s hills make it one of the few places you can look down on the ships. They don’t tower over everything hotels in florence italy else.”
Environment : The lone remaining representative from the cruise industry, Royal Caribbean’s environmental consultant, Jamie Sweeting, gamely kept countering and responding hotels in florence italy throughout the meeting. He got his say in the environmental panel, hotels in florence italy noting Royal Caribbean’s progress in reducing overall air pollution by 20 percent and his initiative hotels in florence italy for “Sustainable Shore Excursions”—an important change hotels in florence italy for an industry that has tolerated irresponsible local tour operators whose behavior damages reefs and other fragile sites.
The panel addressed pollution problems—visual, hotels in florence italy water, noise—and especially the unhealthy effects of ships’ burning hotels in florence italy bunker fuel, considered the dirtiest of petrofuels, hotels in florence italy for power while in port. Sweeting bristled at the “F” grade that Friends of the Earth had assigned Royal Caribbean for in-port air pollution. He said the alternative, a dockside power supply, would not be as effective overall.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation hotels in florence italy put Charleston on its watch list list last year—one notch below endangered —and the World Monuments Fund did likewise . The actions cheered local opponents and infuriated the mayor. Many attendees last week were from the affluent Ansonborough neighborhood, right next to the Carnival pier and its traffic jams. The angry residents have spent extensively to fix up their historic hotels in florence italy houses—so well that their neighborhood is itself a tourist attraction.
However cruise opponents may have let slip a tone-deaf note of their own; in a town where the pro-cruise rallying cry is “Jobs, Not Snobs,” organizers had to defend hotels in florence italy the $300 attendance fee for the one-and-a-half day conference. Chastened, they dropped per-session prices, hotels in florence italy but too late to entice any working-class Charlestonians to join the discussions.
More significant, both sides in the Charleston debate have become so entrenched, slinging verbal bombs and lawsuits at each other, that the opposition refused to attend, save for one lone Port Authority man. ( I m the only one not being sued. ) So the data presented hotels in florence italy by the economists did not fall on d