Cruise season kick-off in the port of Kiel
The call by the cruise vessel “AIDAcara” on Sunday, 7th April, marks the beginning of Kiel’s cruise season 2019.
Dr Dirk Claus, Managing Director at PORT OF KIEL (SEEHAFEN KIEL GmbH & Co. KG: “The upcoming cruise season will be very exciting and we will welcome a lot of new ships to Kiel. The second and new terminal building at the Ostseekai is presently under con-struction and we are working on the implementation of the onshore power project.” The port is currently investing about 30 million Euros in the cruise sector. Half of this amount is dedicated to sustainability measures.
To that effect, the construction of the commercial port’s first onshore power supply plant at the Norwegenkai Terminal is on the finishing straight. The facility will be inaugurated this spring. The Ostseekai Cruise Teminal and the Schwedenkai Ferry Terminal will both be equipped with onshore power supply plants as well next year. This innovative project has been tendered just recently. Dirk Claus: “We expect to supply 70 to 80 cruise vessels with onshore power at the Ostseekai Terminal during the first full operating year. This represents half of the overall cruise calls at our city terminals.”
Kiel expects numerous highlights this season and a new record in terms of tonnage. After the new vessel “Mein Schiff 2” has already been handed over by the Meyer Turku Shipyard to the shipping company of TUI Cruises at the Ostseekai at the beginning of the year, another six maiden calls are envisaged for the season. The vessels “Nieuw Statendam” of Holland America Line, the “AIDAprima” as well as the expedition ship “World Explorer” will visit Kiel for the very first time amongst others. The most frequent guests will be the vessels of the shipping companies of AIDA, TUI Cruises, MSC and Costa that use Kiel for passenger turnaround. Dirk Claus: “I am very happy that Costa is again doubling the number of its cruises starting in Kiel this year.” The largest vessel of the season is the “MSC Meraviglia” (171,600 GT) which sets a new record in terms of tonnage on the fjord. With this ship MSC is offering 22 voyages across Northern Europe starting from Ostuferhafen.
The peak of the season will be on 17th August when in addition to the large ferries to Scandinavia there will be no less than four ocean-going cruise vessels in port at the same time, namely the “AIDAprima”, the “AIDAluna”, the “Vasco da Gama” and the “MSC Meraviglia”. A total of 179 visits (2018: 169) by 33 different cruise vessels have been registered in Kiel for 2019. The overall tonnage rises to more than 15 million GT (2018: 11.5 million GT) and the number of passengers is expected to clearly exceed 600,000.