WESTERN BUREAU:

Kingston would not have made it on the radar of the English luxury line that made an inaugural stop at the Kingston Wharves yesterday had it not been for cricket.

The six-star vessel, housing 250 cricket fans attending the English versus West Indies Test match, now on at Sabina Park, will dock here for three days, with the option of visiting Port Antonio, Portland, before departing for the Dominican Republic and the second Test in Antigua.

"Because Kingston is not really a tourist destination, the passengers that we brought wouldn't normally come here for a holiday; they would come to the rest of Jamaica, but not Kingston," said Drew Foster, chairman of ITC, the tour operator that organised the trip.

Revealing that the voyage was two years in the making, the veteran, who has been doing business with Jamaica for the last 35 years, said: "We target the top end of the market; we don't bring volume, we bring quality."

Wealthy UK visitors

True to form, Foster's high-end passengers include former English cricketers Darren Gough, Lord Alan Lamb and Paul Allott, who disembarked, along with a number of wealthy United Kingdom visitors.

Welcoming the group, Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett spoke of the genetic connection of tourism and sports. "Sports has been a very important fashion in the psychographic approach that we have taken to marketing-events tourism," he told the gathering.

He said the ship was the first in a series of firsts, which would continue with the island's first-ever 100-metre Beach Sprint in November in Negril.

The cruise line complements the hosts of land-based visitors that have invaded the city tagged 'The Heartbeat of the Caribbean'. Checks with the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association show a 100 per cent booking for the 2,000 rooms in the metropolis as a result of the cricket match.

janet.silvera@gleanerjm.com