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Mexican violence leading LA’s biggest ship to find another home port
The West Coast’s biggest cruise ship is leaving the Port of Los Angeles next year, in large part because of fears of violence in Mexico.
That was behind the decision of the Royal Caribbean International to relocate ites 3,835-passenger Mariner of the Seas to move to Galveston, Texas., for trips to Europe and the Caribbean.
Since arriving in Los Angeles early last year, the $650 million passenger ship has been offering weekly seven-day cruises to Mexico.
“The widely publicized war between the country’s federal government and its powerful drug cartels has led to nearly 30,000 deaths since 2007. And on the West Coast – where 90 percent of cruises depart for the Mexican Riviera and other points south – the number of passengers in the last two years has dwindled by 21 percent,” according to the Los Angeles Business Journal.
“People are obviously concerned about the violence and justifiably so,” said Oivind Mathisen, editor of Cruise Industry New. “They don’t want to get caught in the crossfire.”
The Royal Caribbean cruise line told the newspaper that the decision is an economic one.
“We’re looking to maximize our profits,” said Harrison Liu, a spokesman for the cruise line, owned by Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. “Both Europe and the Caribbean are hotter tickets than the Mexican Riviera, and there’s a stable market out of Galveston.”
This could be the start of other ships canceling Mexican stops, which so far has not happened.
The Port of San Diego recently lost the only luxury cruise liner based there: Carnival Cruise’s Elation. The ship relocated to Mobile, Ala., a port spokesman said, amid a bookings lull driven, in part, by the Mexican crime.
Mexican bookings have plummeted despite repeated publicity that shows most of the violence is restricted to border areas that are not normal stops for tourists.
By David Wilkening
David
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