Closing of 2010 Klaipėda port cruise season

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. Cruise ship“Alexander von Humboldt“ which comes to our port for the second time, moored at the Klaipėda cruise ship terminal in the morning of 23 September of this year; it closed this year‘s cruise season. “Alexander von Humboldt“, which was built in October 1990 in Panama, is 152,2 m length, 19,8 m beam and 5,82 m draft. The agent of this ship flying Bahamas flag is UAB “Vakarų laivų agentai“.

Ship‘s tourists are served by UAB “Relita“. 400 passengers came to the port city of Klaipėda on this ship. 261 tourists had ordered excursions. The tourists had an opportunity to visit the Curonian spit, Palanga, go sight-seeing in the city and the old town of Klaipėda.

 

CRUISE STATISTICS. In total this year 45 cruise ship calls were registered and around 35 000 passengers were received. In 2009, 50 cruise ships and 33 335 passengers visited the port city of Klaipėda.  

This year, a particularly large number of big (longer than 175 m) ships visited the port city – 18 calls of such liners were registered. Also, 2 cruise ships dropped anchor in our port for the first time in 2010 – “Kristina Regina“ and “Mein Shiff“; they were traditionally given the coats of arms of the port.

Port dues, collected from the cruise ships that visited the port of Klaipėda in 2010, preliminary amount to 1,42 million LTL. In 2009, dues amounting to 1,796 million LTL were collected from the cruise ships.

 

	Comparison		2009 / 2010,
	2009 cruise season	2010 cruise season	%
Number of ships	50	45	– 10
Number of passengers	33 335	~ 35 000	+ 5
Port dues (from cruise ships)	1,796 mln. million LTL	~ 1,42 million LTL	– 21

2010 were rich with cruise events which promote Klaipėda as a cruise port: representatives of the port participated in exhibitions and conference, activities of international associations.

On 15-18 March 2010, the delegation of Klaipėda port and city attended already for the 7^th time the biggest annual global cruise shipping exhibition and conference “Cruise Shipping Miami 2010“ in Miami (USA).

On 27-29 April 2010, the representatives attended the 9^th annual general assembly and conference of the international cruise association “Cruise Europe“ (the Seaport Authority is a member of this association already since 2001) held in Amsterdam (Holland).

On 13 September 2010, the port representatives attended the conference “European Cruise Council 2010“ which was held in Brussels (attendants – representatives of AB “Klaipėdos laivų remontas“ and UAB “Klaipėdos Mėja“).

After the 2010 cruise shipping season is over, at the beginning of October the Seaport Authority is planning to organize a traditional round table discussion for the Republic‘s tourism institutions and companies operating within the field of cruise shipping, whereat the participants could share their experience related to inducement of cruise shipping, coordinated actions program, discuss how to make cooperation more effective, what kind of problems arise and what are the ways to solve them.    

 

On 19 March2010, even before the start of this year‘s cruise season, the amendments of the rules of application of Klaipėda State Seaport dues came into effect, which create more favourable conditions to the cruise ships coming into the Klaipėda port. According to them, dues reduced by 20 % are applied to ships for the second and third call during the calendar year.

11 cruise ships have already taken advantage of the aforementioned rebates, including 210,81 m long “Empress“ which has visited our port 9 times already and 162,37 m long “Princess Daphne“ which has visited the port 6 times.

 

Calls of 36 cruise ships are expected for the next year. Besides, according to the latest data, 2 cruise ships will moor at our port for the first time next year – almost 300 m length “Costa Pacifica“ which plans to visit the port several times and “Seabourn Pride“ which plans to visit the port 6 times.