Final cruise ship to depart Vancouver today, wrapping up record season

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The final cruise ship of the season will be weighing anchor and sailing under the Lions Gate Bridge Friday afternoon, wrapping up a year that saw record numbers.

Vancouver saw more than one million cruise passengers on 288 ship visits in 2019. Carmen Ortega with the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority says that is a 22 per cent increase in passenger volume over last year and a record number of passengers going through the terminal.

“It’s very close to tell whether we’re going to hit an all-time record this year, [but] we’ve definitely hit a record through Canada Place.”

Ortega says each visit injects an average $3 million into the local economy for a total economic impact of $1.6 billion.

There were also some firsts this year, including the first docking of the luxury Cunard line’s Queen Elizabeth, and the inaugural North American voyage of the Hurtigruten’s MS Roald Amundsen.

“It’s the first hybrid-electric vessel in the world,” she says. “It picked the Port of Vancouver to launch its North American inaugural sailing.”

The final ship of the year sets sail at 4:30 p.m. on Friday. The Star Princess heads down the coast to LA before sailing on to Hawaii.

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