The tourism ministry of Japan has decided to establish at least six new domestic ports including Yokohama with an aim to react to the substantial rise in the foreign tourist arrivals by the cruise ship.
The Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry is aiming to collaborate with the different cruise ship operating companies to make the ports an easy stop.
But then, the planning for this might involve fiscal outlays. Therefore, efforts should be undertaken to make sure that the plan is absolute effective in every way. Apart from Yokohama Port, the other global cruise hubs that would be designed comprise the Hirara and Motobu both of which are in Okinawa Prefecture, Yatsushiro in Kumamoto Prefecture, Sasebo in Nagasaki Prefecture and Shimizu in Shizuoka city. The operating companies would be permitted to make preferential utilization of all these ports.
Having said that, they would also be asked to create passenger terminal complexes where immigration processes would be conducted for passengers.
The local as well as the central governments would build quays where the large-scale cruise ships would be able to berth. Regional government is hopeful that a large number of cruise ships would be capable of arriving here once the new cruise ports are established here.
In the year 2016, about 1.99 million tourists had visited Japan by cruise ships and the figure represents about five times the level in 2014.
However, there are a few facilities where large cruise ships can berth or even where the immigration and custom procedures can be conducted. If there is no passenger terminal complex at a port, the landing requires a long time since passengers need to go through the disembarkation processes on the cruise ship.
For Yokohama Port, the NYK Cruises Company that is a Yokohama-based company owning the cruise vessel Asuka II and also the Carnival Corporation are expected to join the plan.
The government aims to raise the number of tourists who would arrive by cruise vessels to 5 million within 2020 and also to create international hubs along with the existent six ports.
