Vancouver businesses gearing up for return of cruise ship season

Following a two-year hiatus, cruise season is about to get underway in Vancouver with the first ship scheduled to arrive Sunday.

Many downtown businesses are counting on a busy season to make up for the COVID-19 pandemic, when tourism numbers dropped dramatically.

"We've finally turned the long corner and we're eagerly awaiting the first cruise ship," Royce Chwin, CEO of Destination Vancouver, told CTV Morning Live Thursday.

Chwin said the impact from the cruise ship shutdown was "significant" for local businesses, especially since one season amounts to about $2.2 billion for Vancouver's local visitor economy. The industry also impacts about 14,000 jobs, Chwin added.

While downtown businesses like stores, restaurants and hotels are all impacted, Chwin said communities as a whole were affected too.

"You think about the travellers coming off the cruise ships and starting to explore Vancouver in particular Gastown and areas of downtown, English Bay and those types of places, it makes a significant impact when you pull that level of visitorship out of our local economy," he said.

Even though cruise ships are returning, they won't bring the same crowds as they used to. Ships won't be full, Chwin explained, because they're running at 70 to 80 per cent capacity for safety reasons.

The industry is also planning for any cancellations that might come up because of the pandemic. In fact, the first cruise ship was initially scheduled to arrive in Vancouver on April 7. 

"The scope of restarting the cruise industry is significant and (it's) not really understood how much it takes to get this going again," Chwin said.

Princess Cruise cancelled the San Francisco to Vancouver portion of a recent trip for an extended dry dock in Portland, Ore.

"This additional time will help assure the vessel is up to our highest standards in advance of the upcoming busy summer season," a statement from Princess Cruise said.

The company's statement did not address the COVID-19 situation aboard the ship, which was listed as "orange status" on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control website last weekend.

"Orange status" means there are confirmed COVID-19 cases aboard the vessel, and they meet the threshold for CDC investigation, which means at least 0.3 per cent of passengers and crew aboard the ship have tested positive.

In spite of the first cancellation, Chwin said more than 300 sailings are expected to arrive in Vancouver this season.

"It's another important marker that our season our industry is coming back. And that's what we want to get back to doing is serving visitors near and far from around the world in this incredible city," he said.

"That's our lifeblood for this industry. Without that we don't exist."

Chwin's comments were part of a four-minute interview on CTV Morning Live. Watch the full interview in the video player above.

With files from CTV News Vancouver's Ben Nesbit