Above: Portsmouth (CJ Photo)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Dominica is looking to market the entire island to cruise ships, rather than focusing only on the Roseau area, according to Colin Piper, the island’s director of tourism.

Tourism officials have begun engaging cruise lines to consider berthing in the Portsmouth area, particularly smaller ships.

“There are things that can happen in Portsmouth, when we go to the trade shows we push all tours on the island,” he said in a release. “We go with a list of all the activities that can be done in Dominica whether in the south, the east, west, the north. We let the cruise ships know what they can have access to. The north is limited by the size of the cruise ship berth, and so there are only vessels of a particular size that can get there so you are not going to see the big 3,000 [passenger] vessels go there because the port is unable to handle that, but certainly we do encourage all vessels to consider the Cabrits as well.”

Dominica has three cruise ship berthing points on the island, and is the only CARICOM country to have a cruise ship berth in a national park — the Cabrits National Park.