British cruise ports fight each other

It’s been revealed that Associated British Ports, which owns the facilities for cruise ships at Southampton, has tried to prevent Liverpool’s Pier Head becoming a start and finish point for cruise liners.

There has been a Department for Transport consultation on whether to relax the standard rules to allow a full “turnaround” facility at Liverpool’s Terminal. The consultation ended on 18th September and it has been revealed that Associated British Ports wrote to the Department for Transport and the shadow Home Secretary protesting that allowing the rules to be broken on Liverpool’s behalf would be to “distort” competition in the port sector.

However, given the downturn in the economy Liverpool believes it has made a case for saying that bringing more cruise ships to the region would increase income, not damage competition. The shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling, agrees with Liverpool that the two locations are not in competition, and said that he hoped the DfT would find in Liverpool’s favour. Nearly cruises call at Southampton annually, most of them as embarkation or disembarkation calls, while Liverpool’s terminal is likely to only receive 16 visits, none of them embarkation stops.