199 port calls by 41 vessels expected on 117 days
The 2019 cruise season will start at the Warnemünde cruise terminal on 19 April with the arrival of the cruise liner MSC Poesia of the Italian shipping company MSC Crociere. In all, 199 port calls by 41 cruise liners are expected on 117 days of the upcoming year. 187 times the ships will berth in Warnemünde and twelve times at the overseas port. Seven vessels will be heading for the mouth of river Warnow for the first time: Aegean Odyssey, Celebrity Reflection, Nieuw Statendam, Norwegian Pearl, Seabourn Ovation, Silver Spirit and Viking Jupiter.
Germany’s largest cruise shipping company, Rostock-based AIDA Cruises, will for the first time send three of its vessels to Warnemünde regularly, AIDAaura, AIDAdiva and AIDAmar.
The shipping company Pullmantur has announced to change its passengers once again in Malmö. The reason for this is the increased demand for cruises to Norway and at the same time a lower demand for Baltic Sea cruises among Spanish cruise tourists. In the 2019 season Pullmantur will however continue to use the cruise terminal at Rostock/Warnemünde as a port of transit for its four Baltic Sea cruises.
Apart from the 45 port calls involving turnarounds of passengers by AIDA Cruises, 47 port calls with partial turnarounds of passengers are planned by the Italian shipping companies Costa Crociere and MSC Crociere and by the US shipping company Princess Cruises during which mainly Italian and German passengers will embark or disembark.
The sailing list for 2019 includes 34 port calls by cruise liners with an overall length of more than 300 meters: Celebrity Reflection and Celebrity Silhouette with 319 meters length each, Norwegian Getaway with 326 meters in length as well as Regal Princess with a length of 330 meters. Norwegian Geataway is the largest vessel of the coming season with a gross register tonnage of 145,655.
The Swiss-based shipping company Viking Ocean Cruises has included Warnemünde 24 times in the schedules of its four sister vessels Viking Jupiter, Viking Sea, Viking Sky and Viking Sun.
Together we are investing in the cruise location to ensure further growth.
Until 2020, ROSTOCK PORT together with the federal state of MecklenburgVorpommern and the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock are going to invest more than ten million Euros in the construction of a new passenger terminal at berth P8. After the completion of the planning permission procedure initiated in February 2018 for the extension of the „Information and Organization Centre for Maritime Tourism” ROSTOCK PORT GmbH gave the green light for the start of construction of a roofed complex of buildings at berth P8 in Warnemünde in October 2018. The building is to have a total length of 186 meters and a width of 30 meters. The height will be similar to that of the Warnemünde Cruise Center. The gross floor area will amount to approximately 3,400 square meters. The foundation work for the complex of buildings is planned for the winter half-year of 2018/19 while the building construction itself will be implemented in the 2019/2020 winter half-year.