More than 10 million dollars will be reversed to construct to a new terminal of cruises next to the Port Colon 2000, as part of the actions that the private sector will execute to turn Panama home port, Royal Caribbean International (RCI) announced yesterday that it will establish operations in the Atlantic coast of the country. Augusto Terracina, general manager of Colon 2000, said that already it works in the designs for this new terminal, that will begin to be constructed October.
In December of 2008 will set sail from Colon the Enchantment of the Seas cruise, which RCI will establish for the first time a route that it will have like port from origin to the city of Colon, and of this reality will take control the national project to turn to the country the main port of embarkation of cruises of Latin America. The initiative "will inject fresh money to the national economy in millionaire amounts", assured the industralist, without specify any amounts.
In addition, all the travel agencies will promote Panama as a port of cruises and, with it, its attractive tourist. The promoters will have a year and means to prepare all logistic and the infrastructure that a project of this spread demands. To the being consulted on if Panama is prepared to provide with staying to the thousands of tourists who will visit the country with each one of those boats, the leader of the hotelkeepers, Jorge Loaiza, assured that.
The authorities of the tourism predict that in three years will be constructed about 15 hotels in the country, which they will generate 3 thousand more rooms to 16 thousands that there is at the moment. In Colon there are only thousand 297 rooms available nowadays. However, they are in stage of final construction two new hotels, which will add 316 rooms to the supply. The route that will make the Enchantment, set sail from Colon, includes Cartagena and Santa Marta, in Colombia; Aruba, Bonaire and Curazao, according to Edwin Vásquez, manager of trade of Grand Tours CRT, representatives of Royal Caribbean in Panama.
