Cruise sector needs to do more: Skjeldam

SPEAKING at Travel Daily’s inaugural Sustainability Summit in Sydney yesterday, Hurtigruten CEO Daniel Skjeldam, pictured, emphasised that the cruise industry needs to invest more resources towards sustainability.

“There are some bright lights out there, but at the moment it is not so hard to be a frontrunner in the cruise industry - I wish it was a lot, lot harder,” Skjeldam told the audience.

“There are a lot of players who are unfortunately still just talking about sustainability, but we are making real changes to our operations,” he added.

One major area of focus for improvement Skjeldam believes is how cruise brands engage with local communities they visit.

“We see the effects of overtourism on villages and towns that ships visit, it is not a pleasant sight to have a big ship unload 6,000 people in a small community of 2,000…that is not the way to drive tourism in the future,” he said.

“It’s very important to take the local value chain seriously... we are making sure that we buy local produce from the local communities, we also collaborate with them throughout the year and ask ‘how can we make your business a full year operation?’” Skjeldam said that the cruise industry also needs to undertake more action on climate change.

“We have made a huge investment in making the world’s first hybrid ships and I can tell you it’s not cheap...but we are willing to make the investment because we want to drive everyone else to do the same as us,” he said.

“If we can prove it is possible...& others do it, we’ll be very happy.”