DEBBIE SUMMERS


FEATURE


Zealand Falkland Islands Born to travel


From the Falkland Islands to New Zealand and everywhere in between, Helen Hutcheon charts Debbie Summers’ career.


D


ebbie Summers, who was born in Stanley, capital of the remote Falkland Islands about 480km northeast of the


southern tip of South America, now struts across the global cruise industry stage.


Summers’ parents and siblings still live in the Falkland Islands whose government funded Falkland Lodge for sixth-form boarders at the Peter Symonds College in Winchester where she studied before graduating with honours in tourism management at the University of Leeds.


When she returned to the Falklands she took advantage of the government’s two-year post graduate management training programme. She worked with the Falkland Islands Tourist Board, Falklands Conservation, Falkland Islands Museum and National Trust, as well as two London- based public relations companies.


She represented the Tourist Board at major promotional events in Britain and South America and investigated cruise ship tourism while working with Falklands Conservation, noting that tourism and conservation go hand-in-hand, long before ‘eco-tourism’ became a buzz word.


She also wrote the first edition of ‘A Visitor’s Guide to the Falkland Islands’


seatrade-cruise.com


before joining Stanley-based Sulivan Shipping Services which provides turnarounds and shore excursions for an ever growing portfolio of cruise ships.


Summers is modest about her more-than- substantial role in attracting cruise ships to the region, giving Lars-Eric Lindblad credit as the pioneer with his ‘little red ship,’ Lindblad Explorer.


However, she happily admits to ‘taking things further,’ which saw her graduate from the Seatrade Academy’s Cruise Master Class at Churchill College in Cambridge. She also represented Sulivan Shipping Services at the annual Seatrade conference in Miami (Seatrade Cruise Global).


This is where she met Craig Harris, the md of ISS-McKay who founded Cruise New Zealand (now New Zealand Cruise Association) in 1994 and was its chairman for nearly two decades before being made a Life Member and a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) ‘for services to the cruise industry.’


Summers didn’t have a stand for the Falkland Islands product and said Harris ‘kindly invited me to join the Kiwis.’ She and Harris hit it off immediately, with a shared passion for the cruise industry and ‘a love of a glass of good wine.’


This also led to meeting Jeremy Palmer, md of I.D. Tours New Zealand, a leading destination management company.


Summers was duly head-hunted to join IDNZ’s headquarters in Auckland and in 2014, Palmer announced her appointment as an executive director of the company to head up its cruise department and lead its cruise strategy.


At the time, Palmer said she was elevated to the board ‘in recognition of her contribution in building ID’s strong market position in the inbound cruise sector.’


Under ‘our cruise team,’ IDNZ’s website says Summers has been involved in a wide range of cruise shipping operations, including the development and delivery of shore excursions.


It says: ‘Debbie works closely with the vast majority of the world’s cruise companies and has a wealth of critically important industry connections at the very highest levels internationally.’


Summers has been attending Seatrade Cruise Global since 2001. She regularly attends and speaks at Seatrade Europe, the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association, CLIA Australasia Cruise360 and the Australian Cruise Association.


She is vice-chairman of The World’s Leading Ground Operators, the association of independent inbound operators specialising in providing land programmes for some of the world’s top cruise lines.


Seatrade Cruise Review 73


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