Cruise passengers’ experience embarking in a Caribbean home port. The case study of Cartagena de Indias

The success of the port of Cart agena de India s, the city with the most extensive for tifi cation s in South Am erica, has rewarded the effor ts ma de by the nation al Governme nt and the private sector to br ing the major cruise companies back to Colombi a. This study aims to expand cruise tourism research by analyzing cruisers’ exp erience and the economi c im pact of cruise tourism in the speci fi c ca se of a home port destinati on. Survey data were colle cted from 402 passengers that emba rked in Carta gena de Indias during the 20 09e 2010 seas on. A factor-clu ster analysi s was developed to segm ent crui sers and ident ify the factors that in fl uence their perception and expend iture pattern. Three clusters were obta ined, re fl ecting the differences in le ngth of stay at the destinati on: passe ngers in transit, lon g and short stay passe ngers. Althou gh the total impac t for a home port is expec ted to be higher than that for a por t of call, in this stud y the ev idence shows t hat most pas sengers in Cart agena stay for a short period of t ime before emba rking and their contr ibution to the local econ omy is fairly negl igible. Findin gs from an OL S and a cen sured-Tobit analysis on t he same data highlig ht that fi rst tim e cruisers , with a high educati on level and be longing to the “ long stay” cluster, have a high er than average spen ding capac ity. The fi ndings have several poli cy, marketing and ma nagement impli cations.