Alan Lam reporting

The expedition and upscale cruise market continues on its growth trajectory. It has just been reported that during the 2015-16 season, as many as 77,248 cruise passengers visited the Strait of Magellan, a 35% increase on the previous season.

A total of 121 calls were made to the Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales during the austral season, which has just ended; each ship brought an average of 640 passengers to the region. There were five cancellations due to poor weather conditions, resulting in 7,800 passengers unable to depart from Punta Arenas.

“This season we experienced an important increase in passenger number,” said Ignacio Covacevich, Manager of Austral Port Company (Empresa Portuaria Austral). “The number was the highest since the 2007-08 season when it reached over 90,000.”

Beside the increasing popularity of expedition cruises, one of the main reasons for this rise was due to the return of Norwegian Cruise Line to the region with 10 calls, bringing in more than 18,000 passengers.

To facilitate this continuous growth, the city of Punta Arena is enlarging its main cruise terminal, Muelle Prat, aiming at accommodating vessels of up to 250 metres from 2017. Muelle Prat is the definitive cruise pier of the region.