South Africa could be well-placed to benefit from a cruising boom, but insufficient infrastructure and the lack of a long-term strategy may stall growth before it truly takes off.
This is according to Ross Volk , Managing Director of MSC Cruises South Africa, who was speaking at a media event last week as the cruise line wrapped up its 2024/25 local season. He believes the country needs a fundamental rethink around infrastructure or risk losing out on the benefits cruising can deliver.
South Africa has the fourth-longest coastline in Africa at 2800km, but how many ports are we able to call at? Just four Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth Gqeberha and Richards Bay, said Volk. If you take a broader look and include Namibia and Mozambique, you have just two further cruise ports in a 9000km stretch, Walvis Bay and Maputo.
He pointed out that infrastructure hadnt kept pace with the evolution of cruise ships. The MSC World America is in excess of 200 000 tonnes, 65 to 70 metres high, with a capacity of almost 6900 passengers and 2 600 crew so nearly 10000 people in one space. The ship will transit South Africas coast, but it wont call in Cape Town because the ships too big.
If we are serious about making cruising great in the country, we have got to face some hard truths about the infrastructure we need and its not about ports. Those will come. We have to design cities that facilitate the movement of people. And then we need to design a marketing strategy to bring people to the city. Its only then that we should design the port infrastructure, Volk added.