Figures released by CruiseBritain show that more passengers than ever before visited Great Britain through the country’s 57 cruise ports in 2014. Some 110 individual ships called into UK ports, with many ships calling on multiple occasions, and these ships brought a record 922,000 passengers on day calls, a rise of six per cent over 2013. A total of 53 different cruise lines visited UK ports in 2014 from Kirkwall, Orkney in the far north to the Channel Islands and the Isles of Scilly off the south coast.

Pierfrancesco Vago, chairman, Cruise Lines International Association Europe, has announced from the 30th annual Cruise Shipping Miami conference that more Europeans than ever booked a cruise in 2013. Number reached a record of 6.357 million. This is a four per cent increase since 2012 and a doubling of the European cruise market in just eight years.

The four-day conference program of the 30th annual Cruise Shipping Miami is to feature four thematic “tracks” for 2014: “Ship and Ship Operations,” “Global Geography of Cruise Tourism,” “Market Segments,” and “Cruise Product Development.”

The conference portion of the annual Cruise Shipping Miami event, slated for March 11-14, has been revamped for its 29th edition. There will be more concurrent sessions Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday and Thursday, and the panels will be just 90 minutes long.

Officials at the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) and UBM International, the organizers of Cruise Shipping Miami, the international cruise industry’s largest annual exhibition and conference, have welcomed the decision by Governor Sean Parnell of Alaska to address the conference.

The 26th annual Cruise Shipping Miami Convention closed Thursday with participants—cruise line representatives and exhibitors—calling it an overall success.