The city and Carnival have reached a five-year Preferential Access Agreement for cruise ship visits.
The council on Dec. 16 voted unanimously to authorize the city manager to execute an agreement with CCL Cruise Line, also known as Carnival. The vote was 4-0. Councilmember Yesenia De La Rosa was absent.
“As council recalls, for the better part of this entire year, we’ve been working towards entering specific long-term agreements with our cruise ship partners,” said City Manager David Maistros.
He said Avalon had a good relationship with Carnival.
He said it was a five-year agreement with two options to renew for an additional five years.
“This access would give Carnival Wednesdays exclusively year round. As a result of this exclusivity, uh they’ve agreed to pay a passenger service charge in the amount of $1.50 when this commences, which this will begin October 1st, 2027,” Maistros said.
“At that time in October, if you recall, council, on January 1st, this coming year, a couple weeks, the wharfage will go from the current $5 per manifest passenger to $7.50. Carnival will, beginning in October of 2027, pay $9 per passenger under this agreement,” Maistros said.
According to Maistros, the agreement would limit the vessels to the Sunshine class, which carries 3,000 passengers, rather than larger cruise ships.
He also said Carnival incorporated a guest code of conduct that will be part of the agreement.
“We had some tremendous feedback from our business community regarding their dealing with Carnival,” Maistros said.
According to Maistros, the city’s shore excursion partners spoke highly of Carnival.
“Our goal was really to try to put the brakes on what we are seeing in the industry, which is the larger cruise ships visiting here. It just was not a good fit, uh, for the city,” Maistros said.
According to Maistros, with the Carnival agreement and the Disney agreement, Avalon will have visits from three cruise ships a week: Two Disney ships on Tuesdays and one Carnival ship on Wednesdays. This would be during the period of Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Maistros said the agreement would put Avalon in the position of having fewer cruise ships come—he put the number at 90 to 100—but to make more money off the cruise ships that do come.
Councilmember Mary Schickling indicated she wanted to revisit the number of cruise ships coming to Avalon.
According to Maistros, that is reviewed annually.
Mayor Anni Marshall said Royal Caribbean should have a guest code of conduct as well.
She said everyone can go to Bonds and buy alcohol; they don’t have to just come off a Carnival ship.
“It’s than that. It’s whether or not uh Carnival will allow passengers to get off the ship with uh wireless speakers or boom boxes, for example,” Maistros said.
Councilmember Lisa Lavelle said the whole company was switching to the code of passenger conduct.
According to the staff report, no cruise ships would be allowed on the weekends during the summer or during special event weekends – such as Jazz Traxx.
Repositioning , infrequent, or small cruise ship vessels (1,000 passengers or less) may be considered for visitation by the Harbor Master, taking into account the day requested , holidays, event(s), harbor activity(ies), impacts to public safety, etc,” according to the staff report.
