TMSC Cruises resumes its activity in the Port of Valencia, according to the company's release. It will be next Friday 30th July when the latest generation ship MSC Grandiosa will dock at the Cap i Casal, an operation that will take place every Friday with a full day stopover until 5th November when the summer and autumn season comes to an end. This was explained this morning at a press conference by the vice-president of MSC Cruises, Gianluca Suprani, who was accompanied by the president of the Port Authority of Valencia (PAV), Aurelio Martínez, and the CEO of MSC Spain, Francisco Lorente.
Cruise activity was paralysed in Spain on 13 March 2020 and resumed on 6 May (for domestic cruises) and 7 June (for international cruises). In the Port of Valencia, the first visit by a coastal cruise ship took place on 27 June with the arrival of the MAIN SCHIF 2 and on 8 July the first international cruise ship docked with the AIDA PERLA.
According to APV forecasts, it is estimated that during this season, still marked by COVID-19, more than 100 cruise ships may arrive at Cap i Casal. The city of Valencia is a medium-sized and sustainable cruise destination, with annual growth of 2%, some 400,000 visitors and 200 stopovers/year. Specifically, in 2019 Valencia registered 203 cruise ship stopovers and 435,000 cruise passengers, 16% of which embarked and disembarked in the Port of Valencia using the city as a base.
In this sense, the MSC Grandiosa, with a capacity for 6,000 passengers, has reduced its occupancy to 70%, with an isolation area. After calling at Valencia, the ship will make a route that passes through Barcelona, Genoa, La Spezia and Rome. The vice-president of MSC Cruises has pointed out that the company, thanks to this protocol, has been able to launch up to eight cruise ships so far in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe, and in August it will start a route in the Caribbean. Suprani stressed that “the market wants to come back on board, we are seeing a very high level of bookings almost like 2019. This is an encouraging figure because of the great effort we have made to face this situation”.
The vice-president of MSC Cruises has also advanced that the city of Valencia will be a stopover for the new luxury cruise line Explora Journeys and has indicated that “València is an area that people like to visit and that is becoming very important in transit operations. It is also a point for the embarkation of citizens from all over this part of Spain who have an ideal port here to start their holidays”.