By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A CRYSTAL Cruises executive sees “brighter days” ahead once their ships start coming to The Bahamas in June.

Kevin Jones, corporate manager at Crystal Cruises, told Tribune Business: “The outlook for Crystal Cruises has never been brighter in the sense that we are so excited to be able to get back to cruising.

Crystal Cruises plan to visit several islands on their Bahamas Escape tour, including Bimini, New Providence, Harbour Island and Exuma.

However, some island stakeholders have said they do not want cruise ship passengers traipsing through their islands. They also don’t want any dredging of their harbours to destroy the naturally beautiful seascape that is the signature for Bahamian islands.

Mr Jones responded to these concerns, saying: “What we’re finding is that everyone who comes to find out more about Crystal, comes to love us and comes to also agree with us that the tourists we have are really a match made in heaven.

Mr Jones said: “Our Crystal Cruise passenger is an average age of 55 to 65 and an average net worth of over $1m, they have travelled to at least three different foreign destinations in the last year and they also own two to three vacation homes.”

He said these types of passengers will have no general interest in “crawling the island and leaving garbage as they move along.”

Crystal, he said, will have  a system in place with  an “orderly tendering process that only puts about 100 or so passengers on the island at the time and then spread out.”

“At the end of the day we are a boutique cruise company offering a boutique product that will in many instances feel like a busy ferry day or a busy airport day for land based vacations that already exist,” he said.

He also confirmed that the maiden voyage to The Bahamas is booked at 800 passengers out of 1,000 allocated rooms and that he is “super excited” about bringing them to the country.