Cruise ships have been visiting Norfolk since the mid-90s. But for the first time in the city’s history, Norfolk started hosting year-round cruise service via Carnival.
The milestone comes after Norfolk invested millions of dollars in the Half Moone Center, where around 3,700 passengers now embark and disembark from cruise ships every weekend.
WHRO sat down with Stephen Kirkland, who oversees the Half Moone Center and the city’s cruise operations as the executive director of Nauticus, to talk about what the new service means for the area’s economy.
WHRO: Hi Steven, thanks for talking with us. Norfolk's obviously got a long maritime history. How did the city get started with bringing in cruises?
Stephen Kirkland: So, Nauticus was built in 1994 and there was a little pier behind it, essentially to attract Navy ships — to bring Navy ships downtown to introduce obviously the Navy to the community. And in '96, Nauticus hosted its first cruise ship. And the ship was hanging off both sides of the pier, but it began the interest, Norfolk's interest, in cruises. I think there was maybe 12 over the next 4 years or something.
I'll never forget it. I signed the paperwork (to join Nauticus) on September 10th, 2001, and of course 9/11 the next day, the world changed.
Of course, the travel industry as a whole was devastated, but the cruise industry said ‘it's not that people are afraid to take a cruise. They don't want to get on a plane to fly to Miami to take a cruise.’
And so that's when you began seeing Philadelphia and Galveston and New Orleans and Norfolk and Baltimore really start growing.
WHRO: So, after decades of ups and downs, we're now hosting Carnival year-round for the first time. How do thousands of passengers coming through every weekend play into the local economy?
SK: If you and I were to drive out to Cedar Grove parking lot right now, you would see license plates from Pennsylvania, from North Carolina — a ton from North Carolina — from West Virginia. And so these are guests that are traveling from outside of Hampton Roads to come here to take a cruise.
Now, to be fair, many of them will come here, especially if they're in within two or three hours' drive, and they will park their car, they will get on our shuttle bus, they will come here, they'll jump on a cruise, but many of them are staying the night before or the night. That’s why every port city in the country wants this activity.
Sort of the industry multiplier is $125 per passenger. That's spending out in the community, whether it be on hotels or eating on Granby Street or whatever the deal is.
Two weeks ago, I met a woman who runs a donut shop on 21st Street, and she said, ‘Oh my gosh, we know when a cruise ship comes in.’
And I said, ‘You're on 21st Street, that's a little bit farther afield.’ But it's not far from the parking lot, and I hadn't put two and two together and I thought, ‘Wow, that's interesting.’
So we hear it all the time anecdotally, we've got to capture some of that data, but we know it to be true.
WHRO: Now that you guys are getting into the groove with the year-round Carnival service, what comes next?
SK: We have one pier and so we are never gonna be Miami, nor do we want to be, you know, it's just not our ambition.
Where I think our next opportunity for growth is, and where you'll soon begin seeing a lot more attention paid, is growing the port-of-call business.
We have Carnival every single weekend. Having these ships in on a Tuesday when, let's be honest, there might not be a lot of other things going on around town, and having 3,000 people get off, that's where there really is magic. And that's for me, the next prize is growing that.
It's not like we're sitting next to Barbados or something, so you've got to find ships that are doing the right itineraries that want to include Norfolk as part of that. We've seen a lot of success over the years with German cruise lines because they really do promote and position Norfolk and this region as the cradle, the birthplace of America.
This is such a great win for Williamsburg, such a great win for Jamestown and Yorktown and and should be, by the way, Virginia Beach.
We don't want these passengers just within the four corners of the city. We really want them to make an impact on this region and that's, that's, again, that's our opportunity.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
