Major investment announced for Xiamen cruise homeport

Alan Lam reporting

The cruise business ambition of Xiamen, China’s southern city, has just received a boost as the local Reform and Development Commission announces a RMB1 billion investment plan to transform the current cargo terminals into a cruise homeport.

Considered to be modern China’s most habitable city, Xiamen attracts increasing number of international cruise calls every year. It has benefitted from recent record-breaking growth of cruise traffics in the Taiwan Strait. So much so that the sufficiency of its existing, relatively new passenger terminal is in doubt for the coming years.

Prior to this announcement, the city has already been upgrading its four cruise berths to accommodate vessels of up to 220,000 gross tons. To attract future homeporting, much more investment is needed.

This latest plan will be a major project, covering an area of 47.1 hectares, its boundaries will reach Haicang Bridge in the north, Yundang Lake in the south, Dongdu Wharf in the west and Dongdu Road in the east. The first phase alone will include four cruise berths, a passenger inspection building, an entertainment centre, a business centre and a cruise service centre. The development forms a key part of the so-called Xiamen Southeast International Shipping Centre scheme, which aims at turning the city into a global shipping bub and boosting its shipping logistics and tourism businesses.

The goal is to transform Xiamen into a specialised world class cruise homeport, while moving the displaced cargo business to the neighbouring ports of Fuzhou and Meizhou, the province’s other two major seaports.

Under the plan one container and three bulk berths in Dongdu District will be reassigned into one 150,000 gross ton and two 100,000 gross ton cruise berths.

To facilitate this development, the city will also concurrently undertake various major transport infrastructure upgrades.

Lisbon expects 10% increase in cruise traffic for 2015

Alan Lam reporting

During a recent visit to the capital’s cruise terminal, Antonio Pires de Lima, Portugal’s Minister of Economy, forecast that Lisbon’s cruise business would grow by 10% in 2015, as compared to 2014.

The minister stipulated that the aim was to “specialise” and convert the city into a “port of entry for future cruise tourism of the country”. He stressed the importance of cruise business for Lisbon by underlining the fact that 90% of tourists coming to the city on cruise ships considered repeating the visit and staying longer.

The minister also highlighted that foreign cruise guests spent about 200 euros a day in the city, thus making this form of tourism “more and more interesting for Lisbon”.

During the first six months of this year, 193,938 cruise tourists arrived in Lisbon, as compared to 177,185 in the same period last year. These figures included transiting, embarking and disembarking passengers.

Lisbon will open a new cruise terminal in Santa Apolonia in 2016. The minister anticipated the new terminal would help the city to attract about 650,000 cruise passengers a year.

AIDA cancels calls to Faroe Islands because of Pilot Whaling Act

AIDA Cruises has just announced the cancelling of its three planned calls to Klaksvik this summer in response to the new Faroese Pilot Whaling Act. Alan Lam reports.

The Act, recently passed by the local government will continue to allow pilot whales to be massacred or culled in the name of the Faroese cultural tradition, or food and resources management; it also empowers the authority to imprison - for up to two years - those found guilty of impeding the legitimate whaling activities of the self-governing islanders, who jealously defend their whaling right in spite of torrents of international condemnations.

Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd are among those taking direct action against this Act. It is believed that each year in Faroe Islands around 1,000 pilot whales are dragged into shallow waters and brutally killed with handheld knives. Haunting images of these slaughtered animals lying in a sea of blood are circulating throughout international media. There have been calls and petitions for the image conscious cruise industry to boycott these islands. Many cruise lines have scheduled calls to Klaksvik. They have been accused of supporting whaling simply by going there.

AIDA Cruises is the first major cruise line to make such a decisive move. The popularity of Faroe Islands as a destination has been growing among cruise travellers in recent years. This move by a major cruise operator is a serious blow to the local tourism industry, as it will mean losing up to 6,000 visitors to the islands, plus a substantial number of crewmembers.

Cruise lines will not want to be associated with the tarnished image of Faroe Islands. Aida will probably be the first of many to withdraw from this destination.

Record number of cruise tourists arriving in Spain

Alan Lam reporting

The Spanish public port control body, Puertos del Estado, has just released the latest set of half-yearly figures demonstrating that the country may be on course to set a new record for the total number of annual cruise tourists arriving at its ports.

In the first six months of 2015 Spain received 3.54 million of cruise tourists, a nearly 9% increase on the 3.2 million of the same period last year. About 2 million of those arrived through its Mediterranean ports, which enjoyed a 6.5% increase on 2014, with Barcelona, Málaga, Valencia and the Balearic Islands taking the lion’s share of 1.96 million.

The Canary Islands have continued to gain market share. With 1.11 million in the first half of 2015, a 9.4% increase on the same period last year. The number of cruise tourists to these islands now represents 31.6% of the national total.

375,781 passengers arrived in remaining Spanish Atlantic ports, representing about 10.6% of the national total, with Cádiz, Vigo and A Coruña being most in demand. These three ports have together attracted 311,682 passengers during this period.

Despite the relatively smaller number, the Spanish Atlantic islands (excluding the Canary Islands) enjoyed a 19.7% increase in number on the previous year.

From January to June, Spanish ports received 1,646 cruise calls, with average passenger number per ship somewhere between 3,500 and 4,500, about 1,000 higher than a decade ago when the number was between 2,500 and 3,500.

According to its port authorities, Autoridades Portuarias, Spain’s cruise tourist number could reach 8.1 million for the whole of 2015, surpassing the existing record of 8 million set in 2011.

Matthias Rieger appointed new Managing Director of Hamburg Cruise Center

Hamburg Cruise Center (HCC), the marketing initiative for the cruise destination Hamburg, has appointed Matthias Rieger as its new managing director with effect from 1 August 2015. Mr Rieger takes over the post from his predecessor Nadine Maraschi (née Palatz) and possesses longstanding experience of the Hamburg tourist industry.

Dr. Behn presented the new managing director to the association members at the mid-season HCC event on 29 July 2015. “In appointing Matthias Rieger as head of HCC we have succeeded in gaining an acknowledged expert with longstanding experience not only on the purchasing side, but also the organisational side of the tourist industry and with industrial, political and administrative contacts. As such we have an excellent successor to Nadine Maraschi, who will be sorely missed; not least thanks to the outstanding service she rendered in developing Hamburg into one of the most significant European cruise ports.”

Rieger headed the CCH Congress Organisation for many years and was latterly managing director of the Hamburg Convention Bureau (HCB). Within the scope of this position he was also active internationally and coordinated, for example, German community stands at trade fairs all over the world. Commenting on his new post, Matthias Rieger said that he “was looking forward to forging ahead with the successful HCC concept for marketing the destination and consolidating the interests of the 120 plus members. Together we aim to further expand cruise business in Hamburg.”

Encompassing 125 stakeholders from tourism, the port, industry, cruise business and politics, the HCC mid-season event held at Cruise Terminal 1 in HafenCity, duly acknowledged the departure of Nadine Maraschi, who worked successfully for many years at HCC. Mrs Maraschi will remain active in both the cruise industry and the Hanseatic city of Hamburg after moving to her new position as Liaison Manager Northern Germany at MSC Cruises. “From its modest origins as a 2-to-3-year pilot project with a membership of just 20, Hamburg Cruise Center has developed into a key player with over 120 members and is today a true beacon of success in terms of cruising in Hamburg,” said Nadine Maraschi in her farewell speech.

In the wake of a record year in 2014 that embraced 189 port visits, 589,000 passengers and 23 cruise lines with a total of 34 ships calling to Hamburg, the first six months of 2015 has promptly set a further record. In May 2015 the cruise terminals in Hamburg processed 120,257 passengers during 37 port visits; a 15.5 percent rise against May 2014 (104,143 passengers). Even more amazing is the fact that back in 2009 this figure constituted the passenger volume for the entire year. This shows what the destination Hamburg is now able to achieve when all partners work together.