By
Laura Hyde |
MedCruise and the International Association of Port Cities (AIVP) have held the first in-person meeting of the Cruises & Port Cities Working Group in Taranto, Italy.
The Cruises & Port Cities initiative was established in 2021 with the aim of promoting dialogue, best practices and cooperation between cruise ports and cities. Other goals include supporting a more sustainable and inclusive destination management.
Around 30 port city professionals and experts from Italy, Spain, France, Greece and Portugal gathered to discuss key topics such as governance, mobility and community engagement.
The meeting, hosted by the Port System Authority of the Ionian Sea, provided delegates the chance to discuss how to address tourism flow management and collaborative approaches between port-city stakeholders and cruise companies in a series of workshops. An open lab session with local stakeholders fostered dialogue between international experts and local cruise ecosystem to explore strategies for enhancing cruise destinations from a sustainability perspective and defining the group’s priorities for the year ahead.
“It is a huge honour to be in Taranto and to contribute to the important work being carried out in support of sustainable port-city relations,” said Theodora Riga, MedCruise president and president of the Corfu Port Authority, during the opening session at the Ketos Center. “Cruise development is seen differently depending on perception and our role is to work towards a shared and balanced vision.”
“The first phase of the work, that led to the publication of the ‘Cruise Port City Compass’, already demonstrated the value of the collaboration between the two associations,” said Francesca Morucci, AIVP secretary general. “In the second phase we’re seeing if the synergy between the two perspectives – the AIVP port-city approach and the cruise industry vision of MedCruise – is more essential than ever as port cities face complex challenges that need to be tackled with a common language, share knowledge and systematic experiences and solutions that can support a more balanced and sustainable development of the sector. This working group definitely shows how much our two associations, with their complementary expertise, can contribute to shaping innovative models for the port cities of the future.”