Dennis Berube was excited to see a huge new ship arrive at Nanaimo’s port on Thursday, hoping it was a docked cruise ship.
It’s been four years since a cruise ship last visited Nanaimo’s specially built terminal.
“That’s why we built this pier,” said Berube, a Nanaimo resident.
“I thought it was a cruise ship, but you say it’s a hotel?” Oh, that’s good,” he said.
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The Nanaimo Port Authority says it has received numerous calls asking about the towering MS Isabel since it anchored Wednesday night.
“We’re certainly getting a lot of calls,” said Satinder Singh, port master and vice president of operations for the Nanaimo Port Authority.
But MS Isabel is not a cruise ship. The ship is actually a floating hotel built for the hundreds of construction workers working on the Squamish wood fiber LNG project.
“This is a 652-cabin luxury vessel that came to the Nanaimo Port Authority prior to operations,” Singh said.
“It does look like a cruise ship. This is about the same size as the cruise ships we are targeting for the 2024 and 2025 seasons and beyond,” said Andrea Thomas, Nanaimo Port Authority cruise development director. said.
Two cruise ships are scheduled to call in Nanaimo in May and August 2024, with two more cruise ships booked for 2025, Thomas said. But since Nanaimo was docked, she says progress has been slow to revive cruise interest in the small center. It was just beginning to build its reputation when the pandemic shut down the industry.
“The last time a cruise ship came to the port here was in 2019. Since the pandemic, we have been slowly trying to rebuild the port,” Thomas said.
Nanaimo’s cruise ship terminal cost $24 million to build, so Berube is one of many people in Nanaimo eager to see cruise tourism return.
“For sellers here, it will certainly be a big help,” he told CHEK News.
The Nanaimo Port Authority has set a goal of attracting 25 cruise ships to Nanaimo each year, but has not released a timeline for how long that will take.
MS Isabel will remain on Nanaimo’s waterfront until April as she prepares to welcome hundreds of part-time guests in Squamish.
Related article: ‘Floatel’ vessel arrives in British Columbia waters to accommodate LNG construction workers from Squamish
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