High passenger numbers during 133 port calls in the Baltic Sea spa
On Sunday October 29 the cruise AIDAmar will tie up at berth P8 in Warnemünde to close this year’s main cruise shipping season here. Five more port calls by cruise vessels are still expected in the Baltic Sea spa in December, by Artania on the 9th and 20th, by Amera on the 12th and 18th and by Spirit of Discovery on the 28th.
All told, 411,000 cruise travellers (2022: 294,000) will then have embarked and disembarked during 133 port calls (2022: 139) by 30 cruise vessels this season. “The loss of the attractive destination of Saint Petersburg as a result of the war in Ukraine that has been going on since February 2022 continues to have a negative effect on tours around the Baltic Sea and thus on the number of ships calling at Warnemünde, the same as in many other Baltic Sea cruise ports in the northern and eastern Baltic Sea. It is however gratifying that the utilisation of the cruise ships and thus the passenger numbers have considerably improved compared to the previous year”, summarises Dr. Gernot Tesch, managing director of ROSTOCK PORT GmbH.
The biggest ship this season was Sky Princess with a gross register tonnage of 145,281 and a capacity for approx. 3,660 passengers. 81 port calls saw a complete or partial change of passengers. Rostock shipping company AIDA Cruises for instance sent three of its ships, AIDAdiva, AIDAmar and AIDAsol, on 62 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 1 to Warnemünde. 21 international shipping companies had included our Baltic Sea port on river Warnow in their route planning this year.
Among the highlights of this season were the three first-time port calls of the cruise liners Spirit of Discovery on 31 May, Riviera on 13 September and Silver Dawn on 20 September.
International visitors exploring Rostock and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
This year the Germans once again accounted for the largest number of cruise tourists at 165,000 passengers, followed by 38,000 US citizens, 20,000 British citizens, 4,000 Canadians and 3,000 Italians as well as 15,500 tourists from 141 other nations.
More than 80,000 passengers from around the world explored Warnemünde, Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern or the German capital Berlin and 165,000 cruise travellers started or ended their cruise in the passenger port at the mouth of river Warnow by embarking or disembarking here.
22 cruise liners availed themselves of the opportunity to dispose of ship’s waste water directly into the public sewer system in the course of 100 port calls this year. All told just over 37,000 cubic metres of ship’s waste water were thus disposed off in an environmentally friendly manner.
This year 13 cruise liners used environmentally friendly shore electricity during 42 port calls in Warnemünde, totalling around 1.2 million kilowatt hours: AIDAmar, AIDAdiva, AIDAsol, Bolette, Celebrity Apex, Mein Schiff 1, MSC Poesia, Nieuw Statendam, Rotterdam, Seven Seas Splendor, Sky Princess, Viking Jupiter and Viking Venus.