Cruise ship levies - design, implementation and impacts: international evidence review
This report sets out the findings of a desk-based review of the evidence on the impact of cruise ship levies in the context of international jurisdictions.
2. Introduction
2.1 Purpose
This report sets out the findings of a desk-based evidence review on the impact of cruise ship levies in the context of international jurisdictions. It aims to provide background and evidence on the management strategies surrounding cruise tourism, specifically on the policy and practices of cruise ship levies. The review is split into two parts, namely:
1. a review of evidence from key cases within the European context; and
2. a review of the available evidence from other European and international jurisdictions.
2.2 Background and Context
Globally, cruise tourism is a growing sub-sector of the tourism industry. In 2021, revenues from cruise tourism were estimated at 134 billion USD annually (Vega-Muñoz, et al., 2021). Currently, cruise tourism is growing three times faster than the rest of the tourism sector (Wondirad, 2019). Forecasts indicate that in 2025, cruise ship travellers will amount to 36.3 million people (Deloitte Consulting BV, 2023). Europe is the world’s second largest cruise passenger market, behind North America, with the bulk of European cruise travellers coming from the UK and Germany (Deloitte Consulting BV, 2023). Europe is also the second most popular cruising destination. In 2019, 25% of global cruise passengers cruised in European waters, with focuses on the Mediterranean and the northern part of Europe (Deloitte Consulting BV, 2023).
Alongside the continued growth of cruise tourism, there has been a rise of “anti-tourism” sentiment across Europe, which has led to significant policy and practice implications (Andrade, Costa, and Jiménez-Morales, 2021). In 2021, Nepal and Nepal (2021) found there were 22 countries in the world with some form of tourism tax and their research additionally found evidence that more countries were planning to follow suit. However, in some destinations, such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Lisbon and Venice, cruise tourism is viewed as distinct from other forms of tourism (Kizielewicz, 2019; Pasma, 2022). This distinction has led destinations to consider management and planning practices specific to cruise tourism.
Management strategies for cruise tourism and responses to its impacts vary heavily from jurisdiction to jurisdiction depending on the social, political, and institutional setting (Ren et al., 2021). Recent scholarship has identified that cruise tourism can have complex economic, social, and environmental impacts (Vega-Muñoz et al., 2020) and that mitigating these impacts requires policymakers, local authorities and industry stakeholders to work together to ensure the industry’s economic, environmental and social sustainability (Kulkov et al., 2023).
2.3 Methods and Evidence-base
To conduct this review a systematic process of search and assessment was followed, involving three broad stages:
1. Evidence search
2. Application of inclusion and exclusion criteria for assessing relevance
3. Synthesis of the body of evidence
A detailed summary of these stages can be found in Annex A.
The body of evidence identified in this report consists of academic journal articles, government reports, port authority reports and publications, as well as news and other media reports. Key destinations highlighted in the review were selected based on the availability of data and the level of impact, and subsequent government response, to cruise tourism in those jurisdictions. This rationale is further outlined in section three of this report.
A period of 13 weeks was available for completion of this review; consequently, a rapid review of the evidence rather than a full systematic review has been conducted. It is also important to note that there were limitations to the available evidence base. The specific limitations of this research are detailed in Annex A of this review and, where relevant, as part of the review of case-specific evidence. However, the most significant limitation of this review is in the nature of the policy landscape itself. Cruise ship levies, management strategies and policies around overtourism and cruise ship tourism management continue to be a developing policy landscape which is changing frequently. Therefore, academic scholarship on the impacts of these policies was at times unavailable. This review adopted a multi-pronged approach to searching for data, including reviewing peer-reviewed, government, and news sources and where possible external jurisdictions were contacted directly to gather additional data to combat this limitation. However, it should be noted that new data may become available in the future.
2.4 Report Structure
The report begins by presenting international evidence from five European cases before providing a summary of legislation and practices regarding cruise levies and cruise tourism management in other international destinations.