2 2 0 NORTH AMERICA: V IEWPOINT Leading the way By Stephanie Jones Stebbins, Port of Seattle The Port of Seattle has been central to resuming cruise operations across North America while also providing support for other ports and accelerating the industry’s focus on sustainability Port leadership is incredibly important, particularly as it relates to how homeports can positively influence and enhance the performance of others. The Port of Seattle believes effective leadership is not about just making demands. Our approach is to create trust in business partnerships through active collaboration and mutual performance expectations. As a homeport, we work hard to make it convenient for cruise guests, through a welcoming city destination and providing great services from the airport to the cruise terminals. It is because of our consistently high guest satisfaction ratings, and our ongoing collaboration with cruise partners, that we’ve been able to aim beyond the minimum regulations in areas we prioritise, such as environmental sustainability. The Port of Seattle aspires to be the greenest port in North America. It is in that spirit of leadership we created a green cruise road map by offering financial incentives, recognition and innovative technology. This led to the development of a voluntary clean water agreement in North America between the port, the cruise lines and our regulators – the only one of its kind in North America. The Port of Seattle has also played a significant role in restarting cruise operations in North America during the pandemic. We set out our principles for resuming cruising in summer 2020 as we knew that being operational in 2021 was critical to the region’s economic recovery. We believed that, with our commitment to health and safety and the customer experience, we could play a leading role in restoring cruising to be better and more resilient than ever before. To get there, we formed an internal taskforce to manage requirements, responsibilities and expectations among a broad list of stakeholders including
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