Carnival Corporation announced this week it would be homeporting the Sun Princess in Fremantle after Princess Cruises threatened to pull out.
The move has come after the Western Australian government made a commitment to the cruise industry to fix the state’s infrastructure issues.
Premier Mark McGowan spoke earlier this week at a press conference with Princess Cruises’ vice president for Australia and New Zealand, Stuart Allison.
“Ultimately our long-term ambition is to bring even larger ships to Western Australia. Be it the 3,000-guest Ruby Princess which will be based in Australia from later 2019. Or even the flagship of the Princess fleet, the Majestic Princess which will be based in Sydney from September next year.
Premier McGowan said he had been made aware of the issue of the state’s ports which affects an industry that brings in around $387 million dollars to the economy.
“They’d been making submissions to the former government for a considerable period and there’d been no action. It turned out one of the major issues was the dredging of the channel into Broome Port,” said Premier McGowan.
“The other was pulling up in Geraldton, there was a problem with what’s called the shore tensioning unit.”
The Sun Princess will make 31 calls to WA ports in 2018 and four Princess ships will visit Albany, Broome, Busselton, Exmouth, Fremantle, Geraldton as well as cruise the Kimberley coast.
So glad that they have not forgotten the many passengers who come from west Australia and the elderly who find it hard to fly now. Will be so nice to leave / arrive from our home por. Well done Carnival Cruises. So happy to be an Elite passenger with Princess Cruises.