CRUISE PORTS STRATEGY: THE CASE OF EUROPEAN PORTS IN THE NORTHERN MEDITERRANEAN RANGE

Cruise ship calls can be important sources of revenue and generate many direct and indirect jobs. However, these calls are accompanied by externalities now qualified as environmentally and socially negative. Consequently, cruise ports must strive to maximize the economic benefits of ocean liner calls, while ensuring their social, scientific and regulatory acceptability. To shed light on what these ports claim to have designed and implemented as action plans in the face of such a challenge, a study was conducted on a sample of 36 European ports located on the northern coast of the Mediterranean. Results show that ports report much more systematically and more widely on their commercial and operational assets likely to attract cruising companies and their passengers, than on leading significant sets of actions to reduce the social and environmental impacts of cruiseship calls. However, a review of a non-academic literature highlights that several ports in the sampled geographical area are engaged in a structured, and for some already long-standing, process of reducing the negative externalities of cruiseship calls.