Azamara may avoid calling at Indian ports in the future

[HostDave]

India’s complicated immigration and customs bureaucracy may have dealt the country’s cruise business another material blow.

Azamara Club Cruises, the luxury subsidiary brand of Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd. (RCCL), is considering dropping Indian port calls from 2017, after its guests and crew having experienced considerable delays and inconvenience upon arriving at Chennai Port on 8 December 2014, according to a media report.

The crew and passengers had to wait at the port gate for about two hours before being allowed to land, owing to duplication of paperwork. Even the media contingent waited 20 minutes before being able to board the ship.

“If India wants cruise liners to call on its ports,” Captain Jose Vilarinho told reporters on his ship Azamara Quest, “then the procedures have to change. When the immigration and customs formalities are completed in a short time at Indian airports, the [sea] ports can also do that.”

He made it clear that the problem did not lie in port facilities, but with the immigration and customs authorities. “We may not be calling on Mumbai port from 2017 onwards,” he warned, signaling that the RCCL group had been deliberating on this matter.

While both the cruise lines and India’s tourism authorities are keen to develop the country’s cruise potentials, its notorious bureaucracy continues to be one major stumbling block. It has been cited as a main reason for this country’s cruise business being underdeveloped, as compared to other similarly dynamic economies in Asia.

Azamara is the latest of a series of cruise lines having suffered this kind of misadventure at the hands of Indian bureaucrats.

Given the nature of and the lead-time required for cruise ship itinerary planning, once the line decides to drop India, it could take a long time and a lot of effort to lure it back again.