June 30, 2025 • 16 mins
The cruise industry is an outlier right now. Even as US summer travel is down, cruise companies are setting sail with record numbers of passengers this year. But as the industry tries to keep up with this demand, it’s facing growing pains in the port cities it relies on most.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg reporter Redd Brown travels to Galveston, Texas — a port city that’s at the center of the industry’s ambitious expansion plans, and that is wrestling with the challenges that opportunity brings.
Read more: Why Two Million Tourists Are Boarding Cruise Ships on a Texas Island
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. With fourth of July
around the corner, the summer travel season is well underway.
That usually brings a travel spike, but this year projections
are actually down in the US, with would be domestic
vacationers concerned about the state of the economy and international
(00:25):
tourists turning elsewhere in the midst of geopolitical tension and
economic uncertainty. But not all travel projections are down.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
The Kruis in issues doing extremely well. Every single company
is doing great. All the public companies that it is
all hitting kind of record revenue, record earnings.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
That's Red Brown. He's not a big cruise guy himself,
but he does cover the industry for Bloomberg.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
You speak to anybody who cruises, they'll defend it to
their death. They love it. They think it's the best
way to travel.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
That passion for cruising is part of the reason why
companies like Carnival and Royal Caribbean are expecting strong demand
this year, and to keep up with that demand, they've
descended on Galveston, Texas, an island city of about fifty
thousand people that will host nearly two million cruisers this year.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
It's a beach town first and foremost, so therefore it's
a tourist town. So you'll have a lot of these
shops selling t shirts, hermit crabs, things like that. But
at the same time they're selling all those things out
of a two hundred year old building that might have
a Civil War era cannonball lodged into it as well,
you know, you still have cobblestone streets, and then you
also have state of the art cruise ships right next
(01:37):
to it. So it's a fascinating place that happens to
kind of find itself at the center of the cruise universe.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
What makes Galveston is such a good place for cruise tourism.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It's so attracted to the cruise companies because it does
have such great access to the Western Caribbean, and also,
if you think about the population centers that are around Galveston,
it has three of the fastest growing cities in the
in San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas within a five hour drive,
so that just unlocked this incredible. They call it the
drive in market for the cruise industry.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
But not everyone in Galveston is happy about its status
as the fastest growing cruise port in the country because
the cruise industry's love affair with this small Texas city
has come with trade offs, and the debate that's playing
out there and in port cities around the world shows
the big challenges that will come with the global cruise
industry's ambitious expansion plans. This is the big take from
(02:37):
Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder today on the show the
seemingly unstoppable rise of cruise tourism and how it's transforming
the port cities the industry relies on most. The cruise
industry's recent turnaround has been pretty remarkable, especially when you
(02:59):
think back just a few years to the start of
the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
The story kind of did start a cruse. I think
that's when it got real for a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I remember living in San Francisco and hearing about the
cruise ship kind of parked in the San Francisco Bay
and not being such an early warning sign.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Karen Dever from New Jersey got on the ship with
her husband for US celebratory cruise. Now she wonders when
she will ever get off.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
You heard these like horror stories of thousands of people
being trapped in close quarters with this unknown virus kind
of spreading through the ranks of people.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
In the meantime, they've been air dropping supplies and coronavirus
test kits to the cruise ship.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
The cruise industry it was hit really hard, right and
it kind of got slapped with a lot of skepticism
and a lot of bad stereotypes about how you know,
cruise ships are dirty and they're for older people and
things like that.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It wasn't just stigma. In March twenty twenty, the industry
was hit with a no sale order. The government mandated
that cruise companies cease operations for over six months, but
by late October ships were allowed to get back out
there and passengers were just as eager.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
It really did turn around almost immediately after they were
able to start sailing again.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Almost forty million people will take a cruise this year.
That's according to an industry trade group called Cruise Lines
International Association, and RED says it's not a coincidence that
cruises are seeing record demand right now amid economic uncertainty.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Cruises are cheap. They always kind of cite different numbers
between like thirty and forty percent discount between a land
based alternative and a cruise vacation. So if you think
if you want to go to the Bahamas and maybe
visit a Central American country as well in a week,
there's really no cheaper way to do it than on
a cruise. It's one ticket that you pay for most times,
it's pretty all inclusive, so it's a very economical way
(04:49):
for people, especially families, to travel.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
But the post pandemic boom and cruises has started to
strain ports around the world. For cities that are popular
cruise ship destinations, places.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Like Barcelona or Venice, the Greek Islands, things like that,
the limitations really come down to, like the capacity for
locals to continue to host and be happy with tourists.
It's you know, we've saw all the stories out of Barcelona,
especially last year.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
In Barcelona, locals protested over tourism last summer, chanting tourists
go home and even squirting some travelers with water guns.
The city has put caps on cruise ships, so his Santorini,
Amsterdam is trying to phase out cruise ships to curb
tourism and pollution.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
And again, cruises don't bring as many people to those
cities as airlines do and hotels do. But cruises are
a very visible part of that problem. Right. You see
these ships that are city blocks long and they're bright white,
So I think that does kind of get an outsized attention,
but really that is the stress when it comes to
those ports of destination. You have five thousand people that
just kind of descend on a city and then they
(05:57):
are gone by the end of the evening, and you
know that can kind of irritate a lot of locals.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
These destination ports have also seen increased demand because of
regional conflicts that have reduced the options for seafaring travelers.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Very popular destinations in Israel and Russia are also closed
at the moment because of the geopolitical issues in both areas.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
All this has meant there are more passengers moving through
a dwindling number of port cities, so cruise companies want
to steer more of them away from the Eastern Caribbean
and Europe towards destinations like Belize, Honduras, and Mexico. And
that's what makes Galveston, Texas an appealing departure port. It
gives access to the waterways that connects the US to
(06:41):
those places. But departure ports like Galveston or like Port
Canaveral in Florida, are also facing their own challenges. People
travel there to bord a cruise ship bound for another
exciting destination, But even though tourists aren't trying to stay there,
these port cities have thousands of people flooding through them too,
(07:01):
which can be a big strain on local resources.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Port Canaval actually just failed in its latest attempt to
add a new cruise terminal where they wanted to go
from seven to eight, which doesn't sound like much, but
seven cruise terminals is a lot of business, and local
politicians are starting to think is maybe we should start
to shift our attention our capital elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And those limits on expansion in Port Canaveral are putting
new pressures on Galveston, a historically smaller departure port about
one thousand miles away, that's after the break. If you
compare Galveston's cruise traffic to that of other major hubs,
(07:43):
it may seem like a drop in the ocean. But
Bloomberg's cruise reporter Red Brown told me, you have to
put it in perspective.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Between the three biggest Florida cruz towns, Miami, Port Canaveral,
and the Everglades. They do over three thousand cruises a
year from those three cities. Right. Galv Soon we'll do
around four hundred this year. But it's incredible when you
think it's a town of fifty thousand people. Right. I
drove it in a day. I walked most of it
in three days, and it's more or less doubled to
the amount of cruises they're doing.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
That since twenty eighteen, when the Galveston Port got a
new CEO named Roger Reese. Reese moved to Galveston after
a five year stint at Port Canaveral.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
He's a self proclaimed cruise guy.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
He worked with the cruise companies throughout the pandemic, even
letting their crew workers disembark on the island, and as.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Soon as they lifted the no sale order, Carnival said
they're ready to go. They brought their ship in here.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
And Carnival's first post COVID trip left from Galveston. Red
met with Reese during his trip to Galveston, and Reese
told him since the pandemic, cruise tourism in the city
has only grown. Passengers came and went through Galveston's port
almost three and a half million times in twenty twenty four,
up from two point two million in twenty nineteen. There
(08:59):
are three terminals at the port right now, with a
fourth set to open in November.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
We have fifty million people that live within twelve hours
a year, and so I think after COVID people said, Hey,
I'm not going to get on a plane, I'll strive.
We can get to Galveston, drive there in a day
and get them a cruise ship.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Reese says cruise ships were responsible for about sixty five
percent of the port's revenue last year. The rest comes
from cargo shipping and related activities. The port charges the
ships for passenger parking, plus it collects a tariff on
each passenger and rent from the company's leasing land for
the terminals. According to a study commissioned by the port,
(09:40):
cruise related activities bring in almost nine hundred million dollars
each year to the local economy. Divide that by the
number of ships we have.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Today, every ship brings it two point one million dollars
of revenues to the state and the local government's sales
tax payroll, all that kind of stuff. And so while
if you want to.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Stop that, they really don't have a lot going on
outside of tourism. They also have a hospital there that
is a bit of an economic engine as well. But
you know, an extra billion dollars for fifty thousand people,
you can do the math is really nice.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
But there are other people in the city who see
things differently, like the city's former mayor, Jim Yarborough.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
I don't want to hear five or six seven termble Damn.
I don't want to be overloaded. We can't handle so
many people.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
I don't want to be overloaded, Yarbro says, we can
only handle so many people.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
He is also a member of the board that governs
the port, so earlier this year him and another council
member actually proposed pausing the cruise development after the fourth
cruise terminal, which is suppouted to open in November, does
so and reevaluating is kind of the stance that they took. Lea,
why don't we pause after that November opening, Let's reassess
(10:53):
and see whether or not we want to continue to
go down more and more cruizes.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Right when that fourth cruise terminal opens and it's set
to host a ship called the MSc Sescape four times
that month, bringing nearly ten thousand people through Galveston each
time it docks and departs. But Yarborough thinks it would
be smart to invest more in cargo shipping and less
in cruises. While the cargo business doesn't bring in as
(11:18):
much revenue for the port, it does employ more local
workers and helps diversify the city's economy.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
You started looking at the job that creates on the
economic gripple to create cargo. The last past cruised all
the time.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
This is the thing that really kind of got me
interested in this story was when we found out, you know,
everything you're hearing out from the cruise companies is more cruising.
Galveson's great. We love Galveston, but there are some local
politicians that are beginning to raise the issue of whether
or not Galveson wants to continue to tie its future
to cruising.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
When Yarbro and the other board member proposed that pause,
it ruffled some feathers.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
It made people, especially at the port, quite worried that
that was going to send a bad signal to the
rest of the industry that Galveston's kind of closing up
his doors. It doesn't want any more cruising.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Red says there are two main factions in the city.
And it's not as simple as pro cruise and anti cruise.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
There's these two different terms that people use in Galveston.
They call them bois. It stands they're born on island
and IBC's island by choice. So Jimmy Arbaugh and the
people kind of in his corner are bois. They're all
born on the island. They love Galveston. They have this
sense of kind of like, we want Galveston to be great,
but we kind of still want it for ourselves, right,
Like they don't want to just sacrifice everything and just
(12:34):
let it be for the.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Taurus tourists who bring traffic and noise. Plus, they say
it's not clear that travelers passing through the city to
get on their ships are spending all that much money locally.
About a third of tourists spend a night or two
in Galveston before or after their cruises, but most don't
stay long. Then you have the island by choice. People
(12:56):
like Roger Reeese, the port CEO. He and others who
his view think that cruising is key to economic development
in the area because the cruise industry brings jobs and
money to the city. They're trying to get tourists to
stay a little longer, spend more while they're in town.
But Reese also stresses that courting tourists isn't the only
(13:16):
thing the port is doing. It's invested heavily in revamping
the cargo industry too.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
They all kind of want the same things, but there's
a rift in how they get there.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, they want their city to succeed, and they have
different visions of what success looks like.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, exactly, And it's become very, very hotly debated.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
That proposal to pause cruise development in the fall for
a period of assessment. It failed in a council vote,
but people like Yarborough aren't backing down without a fight.
What it comes down to is this, not everyone in
Galveston wants their city to become the next Barcelona.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
People might not necessarily associate Barcelona and Galveston, right, but
people in Galveston, do you know, they look at bars
that I may, look at what's happening there and they say,
maybe that's not the future that we want. And not
to be melodramatic, but like the deal with the devil,
you make when you do say, like we want more
tourists right, Like, it's this immediate injection of cash that
becomes very difficult to distance yourself from. So I think
(14:15):
people like Jimmy Arbrow and some of the other council
members in the city are saying, this could be our
only opportunity to use the money that we're getting from
the cruise industry and then diversify right and set Galveson
up for a future that isn't just tourism, it isn't
just cruise ships. We could potentially bring industry back to
(14:35):
Galveston and set it off on a new future.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Is that a tens that the broader global cruise industry
is worried about right now as it continues to expand.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, I mean, the world's a big place, but there's
only so many places people really want to cruise and visit.
So it will continue to be a conversation, right But
the cruise industry, the cruise companies are extremely ambitious. I'm
thinking of like Royal Caribbean CEO Jason Liberty, who guys
it's kind of like us against the world mentality, So saying, like,
cruising industry is two percent of the travel industry right now,
they want a bigger chunk of that right, so they're
(15:06):
not stopping their expansion anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
What could be the next Galveston in the US.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
I think Galveson is the next Galveson, to be honest
with you, just because the momentum is just so intense
and you can tell when you're there just how important
cruising is to the city and how important it is
to the industry. Galveston for them is kind of the
key that unlocks the Western Caribbean. So for the time being,
I think it's kind of like, yeah, foot on the
gas and Galveston for the industry.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast offer. If you liked this episode,
make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever
you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow
Speaker 4 (16:01):
Anyw
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. With fourth of July
around the corner, the summer travel season is well underway.
That usually brings a travel spike, but this year projections
are actually down in the US, with would be domestic
vacationers concerned about the state of the economy and international
(00:25):
tourists turning elsewhere in the midst of geopolitical tension and
economic uncertainty. But not all travel projections are down.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
The Kruis in issues doing extremely well. Every single company
is doing great. All the public companies that it is
all hitting kind of record revenue, record earnings.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
That's Red Brown. He's not a big cruise guy himself,
but he does cover the industry for Bloomberg.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
You speak to anybody who cruises, they'll defend it to
their death. They love it. They think it's the best
way to travel.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
That passion for cruising is part of the reason why
companies like Carnival and Royal Caribbean are expecting strong demand
this year, and to keep up with that demand, they've
descended on Galveston, Texas, an island city of about fifty
thousand people that will host nearly two million cruisers this year.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
It's a beach town first and foremost, so therefore it's
a tourist town. So you'll have a lot of these
shops selling t shirts, hermit crabs, things like that. But
at the same time they're selling all those things out
of a two hundred year old building that might have
a Civil War era cannonball lodged into it as well,
you know, you still have cobblestone streets, and then you
also have state of the art cruise ships right next
(01:37):
to it. So it's a fascinating place that happens to
kind of find itself at the center of the cruise universe.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
What makes Galveston is such a good place for cruise tourism.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It's so attracted to the cruise companies because it does
have such great access to the Western Caribbean, and also,
if you think about the population centers that are around Galveston,
it has three of the fastest growing cities in the
in San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas within a five hour drive,
so that just unlocked this incredible. They call it the
drive in market for the cruise industry.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
But not everyone in Galveston is happy about its status
as the fastest growing cruise port in the country because
the cruise industry's love affair with this small Texas city
has come with trade offs, and the debate that's playing
out there and in port cities around the world shows
the big challenges that will come with the global cruise
industry's ambitious expansion plans. This is the big take from
(02:37):
Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder today on the show the
seemingly unstoppable rise of cruise tourism and how it's transforming
the port cities the industry relies on most. The cruise
industry's recent turnaround has been pretty remarkable, especially when you
(02:59):
think back just a few years to the start of
the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
The story kind of did start a cruse. I think
that's when it got real for a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I remember living in San Francisco and hearing about the
cruise ship kind of parked in the San Francisco Bay
and not being such an early warning sign.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Karen Dever from New Jersey got on the ship with
her husband for US celebratory cruise. Now she wonders when
she will ever get off.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
You heard these like horror stories of thousands of people
being trapped in close quarters with this unknown virus kind
of spreading through the ranks of people.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
In the meantime, they've been air dropping supplies and coronavirus
test kits to the cruise ship.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
The cruise industry it was hit really hard, right and
it kind of got slapped with a lot of skepticism
and a lot of bad stereotypes about how you know,
cruise ships are dirty and they're for older people and
things like that.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It wasn't just stigma. In March twenty twenty, the industry
was hit with a no sale order. The government mandated
that cruise companies cease operations for over six months, but
by late October ships were allowed to get back out
there and passengers were just as eager.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
It really did turn around almost immediately after they were
able to start sailing again.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Almost forty million people will take a cruise this year.
That's according to an industry trade group called Cruise Lines
International Association, and RED says it's not a coincidence that
cruises are seeing record demand right now amid economic uncertainty.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Cruises are cheap. They always kind of cite different numbers
between like thirty and forty percent discount between a land
based alternative and a cruise vacation. So if you think
if you want to go to the Bahamas and maybe
visit a Central American country as well in a week,
there's really no cheaper way to do it than on
a cruise. It's one ticket that you pay for most times,
it's pretty all inclusive, so it's a very economical way
(04:49):
for people, especially families, to travel.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
But the post pandemic boom and cruises has started to
strain ports around the world. For cities that are popular
cruise ship destinations, places.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Like Barcelona or Venice, the Greek Islands, things like that,
the limitations really come down to, like the capacity for
locals to continue to host and be happy with tourists.
It's you know, we've saw all the stories out of Barcelona,
especially last year.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
In Barcelona, locals protested over tourism last summer, chanting tourists
go home and even squirting some travelers with water guns.
The city has put caps on cruise ships, so his Santorini,
Amsterdam is trying to phase out cruise ships to curb
tourism and pollution.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
And again, cruises don't bring as many people to those
cities as airlines do and hotels do. But cruises are
a very visible part of that problem. Right. You see
these ships that are city blocks long and they're bright white,
So I think that does kind of get an outsized attention,
but really that is the stress when it comes to
those ports of destination. You have five thousand people that
just kind of descend on a city and then they
(05:57):
are gone by the end of the evening, and you
know that can kind of irritate a lot of locals.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
These destination ports have also seen increased demand because of
regional conflicts that have reduced the options for seafaring travelers.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Very popular destinations in Israel and Russia are also closed
at the moment because of the geopolitical issues in both areas.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
All this has meant there are more passengers moving through
a dwindling number of port cities, so cruise companies want
to steer more of them away from the Eastern Caribbean
and Europe towards destinations like Belize, Honduras, and Mexico. And
that's what makes Galveston, Texas an appealing departure port. It
gives access to the waterways that connects the US to
(06:41):
those places. But departure ports like Galveston or like Port
Canaveral in Florida, are also facing their own challenges. People
travel there to bord a cruise ship bound for another
exciting destination, But even though tourists aren't trying to stay there,
these port cities have thousands of people flooding through them too,
(07:01):
which can be a big strain on local resources.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Port Canaval actually just failed in its latest attempt to
add a new cruise terminal where they wanted to go
from seven to eight, which doesn't sound like much, but
seven cruise terminals is a lot of business, and local
politicians are starting to think is maybe we should start
to shift our attention our capital elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And those limits on expansion in Port Canaveral are putting
new pressures on Galveston, a historically smaller departure port about
one thousand miles away, that's after the break. If you
compare Galveston's cruise traffic to that of other major hubs,
(07:43):
it may seem like a drop in the ocean. But
Bloomberg's cruise reporter Red Brown told me, you have to
put it in perspective.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Between the three biggest Florida cruz towns, Miami, Port Canaveral,
and the Everglades. They do over three thousand cruises a
year from those three cities. Right. Galv Soon we'll do
around four hundred this year. But it's incredible when you
think it's a town of fifty thousand people. Right. I
drove it in a day. I walked most of it
in three days, and it's more or less doubled to
the amount of cruises they're doing.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
That since twenty eighteen, when the Galveston Port got a
new CEO named Roger Reese. Reese moved to Galveston after
a five year stint at Port Canaveral.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
He's a self proclaimed cruise guy.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
He worked with the cruise companies throughout the pandemic, even
letting their crew workers disembark on the island, and as.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Soon as they lifted the no sale order, Carnival said
they're ready to go. They brought their ship in here.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
And Carnival's first post COVID trip left from Galveston. Red
met with Reese during his trip to Galveston, and Reese
told him since the pandemic, cruise tourism in the city
has only grown. Passengers came and went through Galveston's port
almost three and a half million times in twenty twenty four,
up from two point two million in twenty nineteen. There
(08:59):
are three terminals at the port right now, with a
fourth set to open in November.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
We have fifty million people that live within twelve hours
a year, and so I think after COVID people said, Hey,
I'm not going to get on a plane, I'll strive.
We can get to Galveston, drive there in a day
and get them a cruise ship.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Reese says cruise ships were responsible for about sixty five
percent of the port's revenue last year. The rest comes
from cargo shipping and related activities. The port charges the
ships for passenger parking, plus it collects a tariff on
each passenger and rent from the company's leasing land for
the terminals. According to a study commissioned by the port,
(09:40):
cruise related activities bring in almost nine hundred million dollars
each year to the local economy. Divide that by the
number of ships we have.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Today, every ship brings it two point one million dollars
of revenues to the state and the local government's sales
tax payroll, all that kind of stuff. And so while
if you want to.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Stop that, they really don't have a lot going on
outside of tourism. They also have a hospital there that
is a bit of an economic engine as well. But
you know, an extra billion dollars for fifty thousand people,
you can do the math is really nice.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
But there are other people in the city who see
things differently, like the city's former mayor, Jim Yarborough.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
I don't want to hear five or six seven termble Damn.
I don't want to be overloaded. We can't handle so
many people.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
I don't want to be overloaded, Yarbro says, we can
only handle so many people.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
He is also a member of the board that governs
the port, so earlier this year him and another council
member actually proposed pausing the cruise development after the fourth
cruise terminal, which is suppouted to open in November, does
so and reevaluating is kind of the stance that they took. Lea,
why don't we pause after that November opening, Let's reassess
(10:53):
and see whether or not we want to continue to
go down more and more cruizes.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Right when that fourth cruise terminal opens and it's set
to host a ship called the MSc Sescape four times
that month, bringing nearly ten thousand people through Galveston each
time it docks and departs. But Yarborough thinks it would
be smart to invest more in cargo shipping and less
in cruises. While the cargo business doesn't bring in as
(11:18):
much revenue for the port, it does employ more local
workers and helps diversify the city's economy.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
You started looking at the job that creates on the
economic gripple to create cargo. The last past cruised all
the time.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
This is the thing that really kind of got me
interested in this story was when we found out, you know,
everything you're hearing out from the cruise companies is more cruising.
Galveson's great. We love Galveston, but there are some local
politicians that are beginning to raise the issue of whether
or not Galveson wants to continue to tie its future
to cruising.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
When Yarbro and the other board member proposed that pause,
it ruffled some feathers.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
It made people, especially at the port, quite worried that
that was going to send a bad signal to the
rest of the industry that Galveston's kind of closing up
his doors. It doesn't want any more cruising.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Red says there are two main factions in the city.
And it's not as simple as pro cruise and anti cruise.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
There's these two different terms that people use in Galveston.
They call them bois. It stands they're born on island
and IBC's island by choice. So Jimmy Arbaugh and the
people kind of in his corner are bois. They're all
born on the island. They love Galveston. They have this
sense of kind of like, we want Galveston to be great,
but we kind of still want it for ourselves, right,
Like they don't want to just sacrifice everything and just
(12:34):
let it be for the.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Taurus tourists who bring traffic and noise. Plus, they say
it's not clear that travelers passing through the city to
get on their ships are spending all that much money locally.
About a third of tourists spend a night or two
in Galveston before or after their cruises, but most don't
stay long. Then you have the island by choice. People
(12:56):
like Roger Reeese, the port CEO. He and others who
his view think that cruising is key to economic development
in the area because the cruise industry brings jobs and
money to the city. They're trying to get tourists to
stay a little longer, spend more while they're in town.
But Reese also stresses that courting tourists isn't the only
(13:16):
thing the port is doing. It's invested heavily in revamping
the cargo industry too.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
They all kind of want the same things, but there's
a rift in how they get there.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, they want their city to succeed, and they have
different visions of what success looks like.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, exactly, And it's become very, very hotly debated.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
That proposal to pause cruise development in the fall for
a period of assessment. It failed in a council vote,
but people like Yarborough aren't backing down without a fight.
What it comes down to is this, not everyone in
Galveston wants their city to become the next Barcelona.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
People might not necessarily associate Barcelona and Galveston, right, but
people in Galveston, do you know, they look at bars
that I may, look at what's happening there and they say,
maybe that's not the future that we want. And not
to be melodramatic, but like the deal with the devil,
you make when you do say, like we want more
tourists right, Like, it's this immediate injection of cash that
becomes very difficult to distance yourself from. So I think
(14:15):
people like Jimmy Arbrow and some of the other council
members in the city are saying, this could be our
only opportunity to use the money that we're getting from
the cruise industry and then diversify right and set Galveson
up for a future that isn't just tourism, it isn't
just cruise ships. We could potentially bring industry back to
(14:35):
Galveston and set it off on a new future.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Is that a tens that the broader global cruise industry
is worried about right now as it continues to expand.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, I mean, the world's a big place, but there's
only so many places people really want to cruise and visit.
So it will continue to be a conversation, right But
the cruise industry, the cruise companies are extremely ambitious. I'm
thinking of like Royal Caribbean CEO Jason Liberty, who guys
it's kind of like us against the world mentality, So saying, like,
cruising industry is two percent of the travel industry right now,
they want a bigger chunk of that right, so they're
(15:06):
not stopping their expansion anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
What could be the next Galveston in the US.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
I think Galveson is the next Galveson, to be honest
with you, just because the momentum is just so intense
and you can tell when you're there just how important
cruising is to the city and how important it is
to the industry. Galveston for them is kind of the
key that unlocks the Western Caribbean. So for the time being,
I think it's kind of like, yeah, foot on the
gas and Galveston for the industry.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast offer. If you liked this episode,
make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever
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Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow
Speaker 4 (16:01):
Anyw
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