The stakes are high, not least for the ports who fear Liverpool, one of the few cities in the world where liners can berth near the city centre, will steal their business.
Now Liverpool has applied for a 'change of use' to enable it to tap into the lucrative 'turnaround' market, where car parking, hotels, baggage and passenger handling as well as food and fuel supply can inject as much as £2m per ship into the local economy. Strict conditions preventing it competing for 'turnaround' cruises, the big-money earners where voyages would start and finish at the terminal, were imposed by the Labour government to safeguard fair competition with other ports in the UK that had not benefited from public subsidy, at least in recent years. Port owners fear the government will give the go-ahead for Liverpool to use its publicly-funded cruise terminal for lucrative 'turnaround' journeys, which they claim will give the Mersey city unfair advantage in a highly competitive market.Īt present liners, such as Cunard's flagship £453m Queen Mary 2, are only permitted to berth for 'port-of-call' visits at the terminal, part of the city's iconic waterfront development, and built in 2007 using £20m grants, some from Europe.
A war has broken out in the UK's £2bn cruise industry setting leading ports on a collision course with the government over a controversial bid by Liverpool for a bigger share.
