From Unverifiable Claims to Measurable Places: Cruise Access Choices at Ports of Call

This four-page summary outlines a proposed study of how cruise ports of call choose between berth access, tendering and floating piers for passenger access, with a conceptual offshore configuration carried as an analytical comparator. It builds on my bachelor's thesis, Cruise Tourism and Water Quality: Green Claims vs. Blue Reality in the Biscayne Bay Coastal System (2026; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23058847), which examined the verifiability of cruise companies' environmental claims and identified an attribution gap between fleet-level reporting and local environmental evidence. The proposed research extends that question to ports of call, asking what data, baselines, responsibilities and monitoring arrangements are needed before one access option can be described as environmentally, operationally or touristically preferable. The main output is an indicator matrix rather than new environmental measurements.