Professor James Higham said Fiordland receives 69 percent of all New Zealand cruise passengers wanting to go to Milford Sound, but 0 percent of spending.
Photo: 123RF
A sustainable tourism expert says environmental damage from cruise ships far outweigh any economic benefits for local businesses.
Studies have found cruise passengers spend less money than other tourists, while the ships themselves cause widespread pollution.
But business leaders say cruise ships bring tens of millions of dollars to their communities.
In the Bay of Islands, cruise ships are big business.
Far North Holdings cruise manager Irwin Wilson said visiting ships brought stacks of cash to his region.
“This last year we’ve had 42 ships visit the bay. Average spend in the bay is about $180 per person. That’s worth about $16.2 million to the Bay of Islands,” he said.
But for artist and climate activist Bruce Mahalski, there’s little appeal.
As the owner of Dunedin’s Museum of Natural Mystery, he operates in the very same tourism industry that cruise ships are meant to benefit.
Artist and climate activist Bruce Mahalski
Photo: SUPPLIED
“I think it’s extremely low value tourism, but extremely damaging tourism,” he said.
“There’s only a small number of businesses that benefit, and the main one would be the bus companies, and you’ve also got some of the big attractions that benefit, but the small retailers, you know, the person on the ground does not benefit.”
Mahalski questioned whether the supposed economic benefits could compare to the environmental damage.
James Higham, a professor of sustainable tourism at Brisbane’s Griffith University, had studied just that, with a 2024 paper weighing the benefits and impacts of cruise tourism in New Zealand.
“What we found was that cruise tourism accounts for approximately 1 percent of total New Zealand tourism expenditure, and that share has remained flat.
This is because they do a lot of their spending on board rather than on shore,” he said
While some regions enjoyed decent returns, he said others saw none at all.
Milford Sound, a jewel in New Zealand’s tourism crown, didn’t have the infrastructure for cruises to dock.
That meant passengers, and their wallets, stayed on-board.
“We found that Fiordland, which was a major focus of our research, Fiordland receives 69 percent of all New Zealand cruise passengers because they want to go to Milford Sound, and 0 percent of spending,” Higham said.
A 2020 report by the Institute of Economic Research found cruise tourism accounted for 9 percent of international arrivals, but only 3 percent of spending.
Bruce Mahalski said the uneven economic benefits weren’t worth the cost from pollution.
Although cruise companies had made efforts to reduce air pollution in response to limits on sulphur emissions imposed by the International Maritime Organisation in 2020, Mahalski said they had done so by increasing ocean pollution
In the Bay of Islands cruise ships mean big business.
Photo: RNZ / Peter de Graaf
So-called ‘scrubbers’ were an emerging technology that took exhaust chemicals and converted them into sludge that could be stored on-board or flushed into the ocean.
“Companies have put these so-called scrubbers into their funnels, like a filter on a cigarette, I suppose,” Mahalski explained.
“A closed-loop system is where they actually capture the materials that are caught in the scrubbers, and the open-loop is where they basically suck up water from the surrounding ocean and just flush it [back] into the surrounding water.”
In the United States, local authorities attempting to regulate scrubbers have faced resistance.
A March article by Alaska Public Media reported Carnival Corporation, a frequent visitor to New Zealand, had withheld pollution data from inspectors.
In a statement to RNZ, Carnival Corporation said it worked closely with Alaskan authorities and was always open to sharing data.
Maritime NZ told RNZ it was aware of pollution issues involving Carnival Corporation in the United States, but didn’t have any concerns about its operations in New Zealand.
But Bruce Mahalski said it wasn’t the first time Carnival Corporation had caused friction with local authorities.
“You’ve probably heard about them in Alaska recently, and recently there’s been problems in Australian ports [too]. They’re not allowing inspectors on board. They’ve just got an absolutely shocking reputation for evading legislation.”
Maritime NZ said it was consulting on further regulations for scrubbers, including requiring ships to change to lower emission fuel in New Zealand waters, or switch scrubbers to a ‘zero discharge’ mode within 12 nautical miles.
Professor Higham said some countries had banned them outright.
“Portugal has banned open-loop scrubbers in all of its ports. Belgium has banned scrubbers within three nautical miles of its coast. In the US, California and Connecticut have implemented bans in ports and territorial waters,” he said.
Cruise Association chief executive Jacqui Lloyd said the benefits of cruises outweighed the costs.
A study commissioned by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment estimated $648 million had been spent by passengers, crew members and vessels during the 2024 season, and determined the industry was a net positive despite environmental concerns.
“If we look at the research that MBIE did in April last year, where they came out to say that the benefits to New Zealand of cruise outweigh any direct costs, and that’s in regards to emissions, environmental, and so on,” she said.
“Certainly there’s some more work to do. We’re not saying that everything is perfect.”
Lloyd said the cruise industry was well aware that it needed to clean itself up, and new ships were being developed with their environmental impacts in mind.
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