Dunedin's booming cruise ship industry is set to take another leap forward, with total passenger capacity rising by 75% within the next two years.
Those passengers were expected to pump ''tens of millions'' of dollars into Dunedin's economy, filling the city and stretching tourist operators, Enterprise Dunedin director John Christie said yesterday.
While the bulk of passenger spending would centre on Dunedin's tourism operators, retail and hospitality providers would also be in line for increased patronage, Mr Christie said.
''There's a tremendous input into our economy as a result of having these visitors come into the city. It really does make a difference.''
An estimated 136,000 people visited Dunedin on 75 cruise ships last summer, Port Otago commercial manager Peter Brown said yesterday.
While only 70 ships are scheduled to visit this summer, their increased size - 2550 passengers per ship compared with 1900 per ship last summer - means an estimated 154,000 passengers are expected.
That would be a record for Dunedin.
But the following summer is expected be the city's real cruise ship boom season, with 91 ships at an average size of 2900 passengers already booked.
That meant total passenger capacity for the 2016-17 summer would be about 264,000.
The past few summers had seen ships arriving at an average passenger complement of about 90% of their capacity, which if maintained for the 2016-17 summer would mean 237,000 passengers arriving in Dunedin - about 100,000 more than last summer.
Mr Brown said Cruise NZ was doing ''a really good job offshore'' promoting New Zealand and Dunedin as a cruise destination.
The larger ships posed no infrastructure problems for Port Chalmers, which was ''very capable of handling those bigger ships'', Mr Brown said.
The added passenger numbers would increase pressure on the port's ''passenger management'' - getting passengers to and from the port - ''but that's something we're looking forward to managing'', Mr Brown said.
The ships generally berthed at 7am and left port again at 6pm, he said, leaving passengers the day to explore the city.
Mr Christie said part of Dunedin's success was the way it ''pulled together'' during cruise ship season as a ''very cohesive'' whole.
''As a city, collectively, we seem to have a really good approach to managing the cruise market.''
