Carnival Corporation Vice President Of Destination Operations, Juan Fernandez provided an update on operations at Celebration Key since it’s opening earlier this month while addressing a meeting of the Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce.

He said, “we’ve already had seventeen ships call in those twelve days and more than 75,000 passengers in a little bit over a week. So just let that sick in. And obviously the pace is going to ramp up even more. The largest day that we’ve had so far is about 9,000 passengers that called on one single day. And we are looking forward that this Friday will actually be the first day where we have over 11,000 passengers.”

Fernandez said there are ships coming to the new cruise port on a daily basis. “I think as guests start getting use to Grand Bahama and repeating, and repeating, and repeating. There’s gonna be the folks that want to go outside. It’s gonna grow even more.”

According to the Carnival Vice President, the majority of the 500 employees at Celebration Key are Bahamians. He said, “for an employee based of more than 500 employees having less than ten work permits and its significantly less, I won’t give the exact number, that makes me extremely proud. Because we’ve been able to build a world class team and that world class team happen to be Bahamian.”

As far as its economic impact Fernandez said more than $7 million was spent with local businesses on Grand Bahama during the construction phase on Celebration Key.