River cruise revving up

RIVER cruising had a far greater presence at Cruise360 last Fri with more attention given to the burgeoning sector compared to the previous year.

In addition to CLIA Australasia providing a dedicated panel on myth busting assumptions on the category, ( CW Mon) there was also a renewed effort to boost cruise line membership and to produce a long overdue source market report.

Speaking with CW, CLIA Australia’s chairman Steve Odell said “we’ve been unable to capture all of the data in the past because we have a missing piece of the river cruise market which is Viking who are a big influence.

“We firmly believe that as a major player they should participate but they don’t globally,” he said.

The first priority was to address Viking Cruises’ CLIA membership, Odell explained, then they could “move to the next steps”.

“Now they’re entering ocean cruising they have even more of a place within CLIA, so we’re hoping we can still convince them.”

Odell said the collection of statistics was vital, and added “we just can’t talk properly about this industry unless we can give people numbers”.

“You can tell a lot of stories from the ocean cruise numbers.”

Odell said a river cruise report based on 2016 results would be published by the end of 2017.