President Danilo Medina visited the Amber Cove Cruise Center last week to inspect progress at the cruise ship port located in Maimon, 10 minutes from Puerto Plata city. The port is scheduled to open for cruise ship visits in October 2015.
A joint project between the Carnival Corporation plc and the Rannik family of Grupo B&R, the new two-berth Amber Cove facility will be able to accommodate up to 8,000 cruise passengers and 2,000 crew members daily.
David Camdib of Carnival and Jeffrey Rannik of Grupo B&R hosted President Medina, Minister of Tourism Francisco Javier Castillo and Minister of Public Works Gonzalo Castillo at the event. They said that they were expecting to receive 350,000 tourists in the first year of operations.
President Medina told the investors: “We are here so that you know that any setback in this process will be solved immediately and you will not regret investing here. It is not just the Dominican Republic that has it all, Puerto Plata has it all,” he said, as reported by the Presidency.
The project is designed to re-establish the Dominican Republic’s North Coast as a popular cruise destination. The last cruise ship to visit Puerto Plata called nearly 30 years ago.
Amber Cove features a welcome center with a variety of retail offerings, including a marketplace for locally sourced Dominican crafts and souvenirs, as well as a wide range of themed restaurants and bars and water attractions. A transportation hub allowing visitors easy access by land and sea to the surrounding destinations and attractions is part of the project.
