SEOUL, June 13 (Yonhap) - Carnival Corporation & Plc, the world's leading luxury cruises, decided to establish a subsidiary in South Korea to strengthen its efforts to promote the marketing and sales of cruise Princess Cruises, said Thursday the maritime sector, indicating that South Korea is one of the new emerging markets of the cruise tourism industry.
Princess Cruises is a cruise travel agency has a fleet of 17 large cruise ships and attracts around 1.4 million passengers annually to their programs of tours with cruises, lasting from 3-107 days.
Carnival Corporation is the only company that has entered the South Korean market. On May 3, the first Chinese luxury cruise, Henna, anchored in the port of Incheon, located west of Seoul, and began regular operations between the Chinese city of Tianjin and Incheon, once a week. Henna, 223 meters long and 31 meters wide, has four restaurants, duty free shop and a pool, and has a capacity of 1,850 passengers and 700 crew.
In addition, the resort island of Jeju, which is gaining popularity as a cruise destination, attracted 63,000 cruise tourists between January and May this year, five times compared to the same period last year.
With this boom in cruise tourism, representatives of South Korean port of Busan, the Shanghai of China and Japan's Fukuoka met on Wednesday in Busan, to discuss ways to increase trilateral cooperation in order to promote cruise tourism industry and attract more cruise to the Northeast Asian region.
The CEO of Princess Cruises, Alan Buckelew, said cruise tourism will help increase tourism income in South Korea, since, when the cruise ships arrive in South Korean ports, tourists and crew cruises spend money and pay navigation tolls.
