Luxury Cruises in India to Sail on the Eastern Coast

by Debashree Chakraborty · Published December 26, 2018 · Updated March 18, 2019

The growing popularity of luxury cruises in India is further picking pace. As in the Western Coast of the country, there are already operational luxury cruise liners with amazing options to enjoy cruises. The Eastern Coast too gears up for developing cruise tourism in India.

More and more luxury liners in India are being introduced to offer the exciting opportunity to soak in sun and sea while sailing. Apart from the Western Shores, the unexplored eastern shores of the country have earned the interest of the cruise companies. Also, the Indian Ministry of Shipping has already started with procedures to revamp the port terminals for the upcoming cruise industry. Ports will soon become passenger-friendly, for Indians as well as foreign tourists.

In a recent occasion, Ministry of Shipping officially shared their plans to promote cruise tourism along the Indian Coast. In addition, the government also are making plans to revised standard operating procedures. Now, with facilities like e-visa facility at the five sea ports of Mumbai, Goa, Mangalore, Cochin and Chennai, cruise tourism in India will get a major boost.

Also, there are many other factors equally contributing towards this. Now tourist with e-visa tourists have exemption form the necessity of biometric enrollments for a period of three years. Additionally, there has been a reduction of port charges while there are constructions of new cruise terminals at these five major ports in India.

In fact, numbers state, that cruise tourism in India will very soon witness creation of employment for almost 2.5 lakh persons, in addition of generating revenues upto INR 35,500 crore and more.

Among the world’s leading cruise operators, the Italy-based Costa Cruises has been operational in India for three years and is now planning to expand. While this company service tourists in Mumbai-Cochin-Goa-Mangalore-Sri Lanka-Maldives, they seek to begin operations in the Bay of Bengal.

In a recent press occasion, Nalini Gupta, the managing director of Lotus Destinations, the Indian marketing arm of Costa Cruises talked about the company’s plans to start sailing on the eastern coast. Furthermore, they also plan to maximise India’s operations. While they will very soon start sailing between Chennai and Port Blair, the next step will be international sailings from eastern coast.

Similar, new entrants in the Indian cruise shipping industry too look towards the Eastern shores. Very soon there will be luxury cruises operating on the Vizag-Chennai-Vizag route. In fact, a new luxury cruise player in India has made plans to also divert the cruise vessels to the eastern coast when it’s the season of monsoon in the western coast.

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Debashree Chakraborty

A travel writer by profession and self-professed addict to literature, momos, dancing, music and travelling, Debasree Chakraborty has all interesting things to share. Go through her penned down travel experiences and collected intelligence in her write ups. Read on!