Orkney sees tourism dip as cruise ship season ends

Orkney regularly sees large cruise liners, such as the MV Britannia, docked at Kirkwall

Orkney's cruise season has come to a close, with the last vessel MS Ambience set to leave later.

The ship is the 171st to call this year, with an estimated 170,000 people visiting since the season began in April - nearly eight times the population of the archipelago.

Last year saw a record-breaking 223 vessels call at the dock in Kirkwall.

Paul Olvhoj from Orkney Harbours said several factors were to blame for the drop, but it was not necessarily looking to grow cruise numbers every year.

"One of our main callers Hebridean Cruises hasn't been in the islands this year," he told BBC Radio Orkney.

"The Island Games took a period out in the middle - which was probably worth it, it was fantastic."

Paul Olvhoj said Kirkwall had seen more cruise ships since he joined Orkney Harbours in 2019

Orkney also felt the impact of the Baltic ports reclaiming some of the business they lost at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

"When I started in 2019, it was 156 calls that season," said Mr Olvhoj. "So we're still in a good position after that.

"For next year, we're looking at 197 calls."

He added that when he started at Orkney Harbours in 2019, "there was a lot of negativity around cruise".

"It was seen as a negative influence on many things in the local community," he said.

"I tried to listen to people and understand what that was and what we wanted to change.

"It wasn't a carte blanche massive change that was required. It was tweaks and management of the numbers that was required more than anything else."

Managing cruise tourism

The MS Ambience, which docked on Monday morning, has capacity for 1,400 passengers and 600 crew members.

Mr Olvhoj said it was important to manage the impact of that level of tourism on the local community, adding: "We didn't want to see continued growth just going on."

He said Orkney was seen as a good example of a UK port that had established a wide cruise offering, while managing the impact of mass tourism on the people who lived there.

The archipelago sees different sized ships over the cruise season, including the Regal Princess which has a capacity of almost 5,000

A new booking policy, launched in 2023, was said to provide a more efficient allocation of berths to spread the impact across the local infrastructure.

"Closing the roads was a real bugbear for people so we've really stripped that back and the booking policy has helped," he said.

"We've also controlled when that's being done and listened to the little points that have come up, like for cyclists."

The narrow roads around Orkney previously struggled after large groups of cyclists arrived on the cruise ships.

"I'm not saying it's gone away," added Mr Olvhoj. "But it's been managed down so that it isn't so much of an issue.

"So it's trying to do those small wins and I think Orkney as a whole can be proud of the way it's managed that."

The departure of the MS Ambience will mark a late end to the cruise season, and the business development manager said it would be a "push" to extend any further towards the Christmas and New Year markets.

"At the back end of the year, it's more of a challenge," he said.

"Weather is obviously the main criterion for vessels not being able to get in and also people not wanting to go bouncing around the North Sea in a large cruise ship.

"November could be a bit of an outlier. But we tend to have benign Septembers and cruise liners are picking up on that - it was nearly a record September this year."