The post you are reporting:
There is a group of people at the cruise terminal )only on cruise days of course and only on part of calls, called "the cruise-welcome group".
The trouble is that they have been told (by the cruise companies I understand) to be passive when it comes to welcoming the passengers.
This is very very silly and loses us a lot of visitors.
When the passengers have come off of the ship and are going on a day-excursion to anywhere - Leeds Castle, Canterbury, London or wherever, they are walking in a determined way to get on their coach and probably earlier than most if not all of those who are not going on an organised day-excursion.
Those who are coming into Town can take a bus or coach and they will not be walking in such a determined way, through the cruise terminal, so it will be easy to tell the difference; the cruise welcomers can then be pro-active and go up to people and say something along the lines of:
"good morning sir/madam, are you going into Dover ? may I give you some information on things to see and do here, some of the historic sites and attractions - all well worth a visit ?
If you'd like to visit Sandwich or Deal, you can take this bus from here, or there is a local tour-bus that will take you to the Dover sites.
If you take this (Dover Loyalty) card it allows you discounts on your purchases at all the places on the back - there's shops, pubs, cafe's and restaurants etc. also discounts on the Museum and Bronze-Age Boat in the Town's Market Square; the 70 seater Southern Queen boat which takes you all around the harbour etc. -much more fun than a big ship; there's also Crabble Corn Mill, a wonderful hidden gem if ever there was one - it's Europe's best working early 19th. Century Water Mill.
You can take a tour of the Mill, see flour being milled and take lunch or a snack in the tea-room which over looks the lake there - a beautiful setting."
We need to sell the sizzle (of Dover), not just the sausage (here's the Town, now get on with it - leaving everyone to their own devices, as is done presently).
Richard Mahoney, who runs the Southern Queen, also has a licensed and insured bus that can take people where ever they want to go, but on cruise-days could be asked to run round to these historic sites, also of course, the Transport Museum and the Roman Painted House (both of which are not members of the loyalty-scheme.)
This bus/tour service would be a chargeable fee of course, but one I'm sure would be taken up if the passengers knew about it - from the cruise-welcome people.
I had in fact created two local day-excursions for Dover sites (The Bronze-Age Boat, the Roman Painted House and Crabble Corn Mill for one and The Battle of Britain Museum at Hawkinge and the Battle of Britain Memorial at Capel for the other one). Lunch of course was included and so was shopping time in Dover.
These were submitted to KTA; they were approved by them (so I was told) but nothing came of them, they didn't get promoted to the cruise lines, so didn't really get off the ground at all.
There's no one I know of with any passion for tourism for Dover in any position of authority; there are people who work very hard, but sadly they're not the same person, or rather that they are not in a position to be able to make it work.
Sorry it's a long posting, but it does go some way to explain why we (Dover) do not get the benefits we should from the cruise business.
Roger