Turkey's popular tourism resort on the Mediterranean, Antalya, has set its sight on cruise tourism and aims to become one of the cruise hot spots of Europe. "Antalya would host at least 120,000 cruise tourists a year starting from 2010," Port Akdeniz General Manger Efe Hatay told the Anatolia news agency.

“We will invest around $6 million in the Antalya Port until 2010,” Hatay said. “We have launched new projects to help Antalya become known in European cruise tourism. We have agreed with AIDA Cruises, one of the biggest cruise companies in Europe, to add Antalya to their destinations from 2010.”

Cruise tourism is the biggest expanding tourism sector in Europe. A record 4 million Europeans enjoyed cruise holidays in 2007, according to statistics from the European Cruise Council, or ECC. Just five years ago only 2.6 million Europeans took a cruise holiday. By 2006 it had leaped to 3.4 million and 17 per cent growth in 2007 has taken the figure to a record high of 4 million. Sixty percent of Europeans chose to travel in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Islands, 24 percent cruised in the Caribbean and other parts of the world and 16 percent cruised in Northern Europe.

“A cruise ship with a capacity of 2,400 passengers will make 30 stops a year in Antalya,” said Hatay. “It will leave 2,000 passengers and take another 2,000, adding up to 120,000 passengers a year.” Hatay said Antlaya had a high potential for cruise tourism, but could not make the best use of it. “Cruise tourists are rich tourists, who spend a lot of money in the countries they visit,” he said. “For now, a total of 40 to 45 cruise ships visit Antalya each year, and we aim to increase it to 100. Antalya will well known in cruise tourism.” Hatay said one of the biggest cruise ships in Europe, Poasea with a capacity of 3,000 passengers, was scheduled to make a “test stop” in Antalya on Nov. 20. “It will be the biggest cruise ship that has ever come to Antalya Port,” he said. A new passenger terminal will be built in the Antalya port with an investment of $2 million. The terminal will be completed by 2009.

Cruise tourism has been growing in Europe over recent years. Over 3.6 million passengers started their cruise from a European port in 2007, of which over 80 percent were European nationals. Some 15.2 million port calls were made in Europe in 2006. Italy, led by Naples, Civitavecchia and Livorno, welcomed 3.4 million visits, followed by Spain and the Canary Islands with 2.8 million and Greece with 2.5 million. Other major ports for cruise tourism include St. Petersburg, Tallinn and Stockholm, all attracting around 300,000 visits. Non-EU Mediterranean ports were also of vital importance, said Dingle, singling out Dubrovnik and Tunis, each with over 600,000 visits, and Kusadasi in Turkey with over 300,000. In 2007 there was direct expenditure of 10.6 billion euros by cruise lines and their passengers, a 27 percent increase over 2005, whilst total economic output including indirect and induced impacts amounted to 23.9 billion euros. The total number of European jobs dependent on the cruise industry is estimated at 225,000.