Negative impact of cruise tourism development on local community and the environment

Abstract

Cruise ship tourism is one of the fastest growing segments of the tourism industry. Cruise Line International Association estimated that 6.4 million European residents booked cruises in 2013. Some coastal cities look at the famous marine tourist destinations, which are home ports or ports of call for huge cruise vessels, with a great envy seeing in them a chance for social and economic development and creation of new jobs. However, next to the positive aspects of development of cruise ship tourism, marine tourist destinations faced with a number of problems related to mass tourism. Congestion and littering of the cities increase in the price of services and products, noise, degradation of natural and cultural environmental, discomfort for holiday tourists and lots of others are the most important adverse effects of development of cruise ship tourism. These and other problems cause that local authorities and tourist entities in famous marine destinations, wonder to work out the effective tourism policy, in order to develop tourism in accordance with the principles of sustainable development. The main purpose of the article is an attempt to identify the negative aspects of development of cruise ship tourism.