To many cruise travelers, “cruising” means “Caribbean” and a growing number have sailed to and around the warm blue waters there many times. Tiring of the same ports, those travelers want variety but don’t want to travel internationally. Cruise lines answer the call by literally “building” new destinations that add variety and help out local economies as well.
This week, Carnival Corporation, parent to a number of cruise lines, broke ground on the Amber Cove Cruise Center, a new $65 million facility in the Dominican Republic to be built exclusively for cruise ships.
“With this cruise terminal, tourism and economic activity in Puerto Plata and the north region will rise to occupy a pre-eminent regional position in the entire Caribbean,” said Dominican Republic president Leonel Fernandez Reyna in an article for Breaking Travel News.
The new two-berth Amber Cove Cruise Center will be able to accommodate up to 8,000 cruise passengers and 2,000 crew members daily. The facility is expected to host more than 250,000 cruise passengers in its first year of operation.
Amber Cove will feature a welcome center with a variety of retail offerings, including a marketplace for locally sourced Dominican crafts and souvenirs, as well as a wide range of themed restaurants and bars, water attractions and a transportation hub allowing visitors easy access by land and sea to the surrounding destinations and attractions.
Cruise line cruise centers have been gaining in popularity with Mahogany Bay Cruise Center in Honduras, another Carnival-sponsored destination, welcoming over one million cruise passengers since opening in 2009. The Roatan, Honduras, location is on 20 acres of waterfront property and is an attractive area for guests of Carnival Cruise Lines and also host to sister-lines Seabourn, Princess Cruises, Holland America, Costa Cruises and P&O Cruises, as well as non-Carnival Corporation vessels.
The Amber Cove Cruise Center opens in 2014.
Photo: Chris Owen