139 port calls at Warnemünde cruise port
At around 8am on Wednesday November 2 the cruise liner AIDAsol will tie up at berth P8 in Warnemünde and thus end this year’s main cruise shipping season. Another port call is expected in Warnemünde by the cruise liner Amera of the shipping company Phoenix Reisen on December 5, which will be the last planned port call this year.
All told, 294,000 cruise travellers will then have embarked and disembarked during 139 port calls by 30 cruise vessels this season. “After the last two seasons of 2020 and 2021 which were very adversely affected by the pandemic we are grateful that maritime tourism has been able to once again pick up some speed this year. The Russian war against Ukraine that has been going on since February 2022 also had a negative influence on tours around the Baltic Sea and thus on the number of ships calling at Warnemünde and the number of passengers coming here, the same as in many other Baltic Sea cruise ports. We had notifications for more than 200 port calls at Rostock’s seaside resort this year”, says Jens Scharner, managing director of ROSTOCK PORT GmbH.
„The biggest ship this season was Norwegian Getaway with a gross register tonnage of 145,655 and a capacity for approx. 4,800 passengers. 75 port calls saw a complete or partial turnaround of passengers. Rostock shipping company AIDA Cruises for instance sent three of its ships, AIDAdiva, AIDAmar and AIDAsol, on 52 cruises around the Baltic or to Norway from their home port of Warnemünde. The shipping company TUI Cruises changed passengers during five port calls of Mein Schiff 4 in Warnemünde for the first time. 15 international shipping companies had included our Baltic Sea port on river Warnow in their route planning”, states Dr. Gernot Tesch, managing director of ROSTOCK PORT.
Among the highlights of this season were the ten first-time port calls of the cruise liners Le Champlain (29 April), Rotterdam (13 May), Viking Venus (14 May), Sky Princess (23 May), Carnival Pride (27 June), Norwegian Dawn (30 June), Celebrity Apex (10 July), Viking Mars (17 July), Norwegian Prima (6 September) and Seven Seas Splendor (12 September).
International visitors explored Rostock and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
This year the Germans once again accounted for the largest number of cruise tourists at 116,000 passengers, followed by 40,000 US citizens, 5,200 British citizens, 3,800 Canadians and 3,100 Italians as well as 13,900 tourists from 131 other nations.
Around 70,000 passengers from around the world explored Warnemünde, Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern or the German capital Berlin and 112,000 cruise travellers started or ended their cruise in the passenger port at the mouth of river Warnow.
25 cruise liners availed themselves of the opportunity to dispose of ship’s waste water directly into the public sewer system in the course of 113 port calls. All told nearly 45,000 cubic metres of ship’s waste water were thus disposed off in an environmentally friendly manner.
This year eight cruise liners used environmentally friendly shore electricity during 13 port calls in Warnemünde, totalling around 400,000 kilowatt hours: AIDAmar, AIDAsol, Celebrity Apex, Mein Schiff 4, Viking Jupiter, Viking Mars, Viking Star and Viking Venus.