New figures show Miami still tops; Port Everglades now 3rd
Port Canaveral has surpassed Port Everglades as the world’s second-busiest cruise port, further solidifying Canaveral’s place as “the cornerstone of Brevard tourism,” Canaveral Port Authority Chairman Bruce Deardoff said Wednesday.
Newly released figures for the fiscal year ended September 30 show Port Canaveral with 3.76 million revenue passengers, compared with 3.69 million for Port Everglades, near Fort Lauderdale.
Deardoff said passenger cruises are responsible for about 80 percent of Port Canaveral’s revenue, “and are critical in the Brevard economy. Not only do the profits allow us to grow the port, creating thousands of construction and permanent jobs, it also puts heads in beds in our hotels and rears in chairs in our restaurants.”
Canaveral Port Authority Chief Executive Officer Stan Payne said moving ahead of Port Everglades in the ranking is “exciting.”
Although the Port of Miami remains the world’s busiest cruise port, Payne said “We’re satisfied with being No. 2, and trying harder.”
Revenue passenger figures, a commonly used measure in the cruise industry, count passengers on a home-ported ship two times—when they board the ship at the start of their cruise and when they get off at the end of their cruise. Passengers on a ship making a port-of-call stop at a port are counted once. So the actual passenger totals for the two ports are closer to 2 million.
Port Canaveral inched ahead of Port Everglades following a year in which Brevard County’s seaport showed a 21.3 percent gain in passenger counts. There are three Carnival ships, two Disney ships and two Royal Caribbean ships based at Port Canaveral, and Disney announced this week that it will have a third ship based here for part of 2014.
Surpassing Port Everglades is a “remarkable achievement,” Deardoff said in comments to fellow Canaveral Port Authority commissioners on Wednesday, as he ended the meeting wrapping up his yearlong term as chairman. He said the ranking caps off “the most financially successful year in the port’s six-decade history.”
“Growth and expansion of the cruise business must remain at the top of our priority list,” Deardoff said.
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