Cruises eye Iran: the next Cuba / ANALYSIS

THANKS to its pleasant climate during the winter season and being just a few hours flight away from Europe, the Middle East is becoming an increasingly popular cruise destination, despite insecurities generated by the international situation. Currently, cruise ships call in at UAE ports (with home ports in Dubai and Abu Dhabi) and Oman.

As interest grows for travel to this area cruise companies are seeking new destinations to increase travel opportunities for their passengers. This year Aida, Kreuzfahrten and Tui Cruises ships, brands that target a predominantly German-speaking market, made port calls in Bahrain. For its part, next winter Qatar will be the new destination for MSC Cruises’ “Fantasia”, calling at Sir Bani Yas Island, a new destination in the Emirates. Looking towards the other shore of the Persian Gulf, the obvious question arises whether someday cruises regularly calling at Iranian ports will be a common sight. Foreign policies opening up the West to the Iranian government seem to indicate that a day will come when the country is ready to receive a steady increase in tourism, although it hasn’t reached that point yet. Several industry experts are confident that the talk of cruises to Iran, is akin to the predictions a few years back that Cuba would open to cruise tourism.

But, just as we’re now witnessing the success of MSC cruise ships creating a homeport in Cuba, so it is very likely that, sooner or later, a cruise line will take the plunge and reap the huge tourist potential that ancient Persia represents.

In terms of passenger ships, Iran is more likely to bring to mind the fate of the flagships of the Italia di Navigazione, the “Michelangelo” and “Raffaello”, that at the end of their brief career in transatlantic passenger service were sold (with some controversy) to the Shah of Persia, Reza Pahlevi, to be used as floating barracks.

The “Raffaello” was assigned to the port of Bushehr, where today the famous nuclear power plant is located, and it was here that she was sunk by an Iraqi air attack in 1982, and its wreck, just below the water, is still causing many navigational problems.

The “Michelangelo”, instead, ended her days in the port of Bandar Abbas from where, with her superstructure removed, she left in tow in 1991 for a final journey to a beach near Karachi, Pakistan, where the hull was later demolished. It’s not commonly known, however, that Bandar Abbas played a small part in the cruise industry’s history: it was, in fact, the sole Iranian port that, until a few years ago, was still being called at by some cruise operators.

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