The Conosur Ports Corporation has reported on the final balance of the 2024-2025 cruise season in Chile, showcasing similar figures for the activity during the tourism cycle that concluded in April.

The corporation said in a press release that the number of cruise ship arrivals and passengers visiting Chile during the 2024-2025 tourist season recorded a slight decrease compared to the previous season.

During this period, there were 402 arrivals of tourist vessels at various ports and destinations versus 407 arrivals in the 2023-2024 season, marking a decrease of 1 percent.

At the same time, the country received 251,747 passengers, 3 percent less than in the previous cycle, when 260,356 tourists arrived.

However, these figures are higher than those of the 2022-2023 season, showing 394 arrivals and 250,000 passengers.

President of the Conosur Ports Corporation, Juan Marcos Mancilla, said: “This situation responds to the ongoing promotion of Chilean destinations as an attractive market for this industry and, on the other hand, to the fact that cruise lines consider the Atlantic coast of the Conosur to be expensive for port services and that the Pacific coast is expensive for maritime services, such as lighthouses and beacons, piloting and docking, tugs and boats.”

“For this reason, the corporation is promoting the preparation of a comparative study of the operational costs of cruises at the South American ports that receive these ships, which aims to gather information from various terminals on both coasts regarding indicators like navigation, agency services, tugs, docking fees, port services, passenger boarding rates and others,” added Mancilla.

Mancilla said: “It is necessary to advance in the harmonization of these values to provide the greatest amount of certainties and guarantees to the cruise companies, both to those already operating in the region and to those that may arrive in the future.”

According to Mancilla, authorities from Argentina, Uruguay and Chile expressed the intention to develop a regional proposal that optimizes costs for cruise operators.

“If we manage to progress in the implementation of these measures, we could achieve an increase in activity in the coming seasons and ensure the consolidation of the tourist destination.”