Intense week of cruise stops in the port of Alicante with an expected arrival of six ships until Sunday, October 17. This Monday, two of these ships, the Celebrity Apex and the AIDAperla, with a capacity for 6,200 passengers each, have docked first thing in the morning, although due to the pandemic their occupation has been restricted to 60%. However, once the cruise season has started, Alicante still has not resolved the lack of public transport that connects with the Castle of Santa Bárbara.
The photo, again, of the tourists walking up to the fortress in the absence of elevators for those who have not hired this excursion and decide to visit the castle on their own.
Further, from the Alicante Association for Cruise Tourism, its president, who is also the director of the cruise terminal, stresses that the city should “live up to it, create a brand and know how to promote it.” They are working on this, explains Balbi, who also recalls that this association is also made up of the Alicante City Council and the Provincial Council. “Alicante is not only the city of the Castle” of Santa Bárbara, he remarks.
Among the possibilities of offer: religious tourism, with visits to the Holy Face or gastronomic, thanks to the 17 Michelin stars that exist in the province.
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If the six ships scheduled until Sunday could travel at 100% of their capacities, almost 15,000 tourists would arrive in Alicante in a week. The sector is going “at a good pace,” says Balbi, who is confident of surpassing the cruise ship stopovers reached before the pandemic.
This 2021 the 42 stopovers of 2019 will be exceeded, before the pandemic and the forecast for next year is “record. If the stopovers are confirmed, the 100,000 cruise passengers in 2018 will be exceeded.” Nor does it rule out that in 2022 Alicante will be a port of embarkation for a large shipping company.
No alternative from the Department of Tourism
The City Council still does not solve the lack of alternative to access the Castle of Santa Bárbara by public transport. Sources from the Municipal Tourist Board insist that there is no other option than to “go up on foot, by taxi or private vehicle.”
They defend that the elevators are closed due to union “pressure” according to a Human Resources report that rejects their operation in times of pandemic because “ventilation is not guaranteed.” The same sources claim to be waiting for a new report and that with the change in restrictive measures, they say, the opening order has been given. However, they trust that the operation on the elevators will change when the management of the services of the fortress is outsourced through the private company.
They also maintain that “there is no option to put a bus shuttle on cruise days or days of great influx” of visits due to the rejection of the municipal controller. “He does not authorize it,” they say, since they are still with the Public Transport Service Project. A document that will lay the foundations for the new contract and that must be approved in plenary session after the allegations period has concluded.
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