A call on 18 October by the cruise liner Marco Polo at the Warnemünde Cruise Center and ended the most successful cruise shipping season with the highest passenger number to date in Rostock on the German Baltic coast, although the number of calls fell slightly, the port said in a statement.
“In all, the holiday ships that called in Warnemünde 182 times this year carried 378,000 passengers, creating an annual passenger volume of 756,000 by embarking and disembarking at the port, “ the port authority said.
According to a definition by the Cruise Europe Association on the method of counting cruise passengers, which adds the disembarking (131,000) to the embarking (139,000) passengers [who are, however, largely identical] and to the transit passengers (239,000), the number for Rostock-Warnemünde comes to 509,000.
"Even though we had 16 port calls less compared to our record year 2013, more cruise tourists than ever came to river Warnow due to the larger passenger capacities of the vessels employed", Ulrich Bauermeister, MD of the Rostock Port Development Company, summarizes.
Of the 182 port calls by cruise vessels this year, 170 took place in Warnemünde and twelve at the overseas port. The largest vessel ever to set course for the mouth of river Warnow was the Royal Princess with a length of 330 meters and a gross register tonnage of 142,741. The vessel, which was commissioned in June 2013, is able to carry around 3600 passengers and 1350 crew.
All or some of the passengers were changed during 99 port calls. Rostock-based shipping company AIDA Cruises for instance sent two ships on Baltic Sea cruises from the base port Warnemünde: AIDAbella and AIDAmar. This season, 26 international shipping companies included the Baltic Sea port on river Warnow in their route planning with 182 port calls by 36 cruise vessels. About 52,000 out of 378,000 cruise passengers visited Berlin
Of the 378,000 cruise travellers the majority this year were Germans at 133,000, followed by 61,000 Americans, 38,000 British, 21,000 Italians, 17,000 Spaniards and the same number of Canadians, 11,000 Australians and 80,000 tourists from 138 other nations. The ships also carried 137,000 crew members from 124 countries, more than one third of whom went on shore leave.
"14 percent of all cruise guests in Warnemünde, that is around 52,000, went on a day trip to Berlin by train or coach this season", states Ulrich Bauermeister. "About 187,000 passengers set out to discover Warnemünde, Rostock or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on day trips and 139,000 started and/or ended their cruise in the passenger port at the mouth of river Warnow."
Based on a study by Rostock University on the spending behaviour of passengers and crew members one may assume that the cruise travellers and crew members spent at least €16 million during the 2014 season, especially in local and regional shops, hotels and restaurants, on public transport, taxi rides and car parking in Warnemünde, Rostock and their environs.
Adding to this is the turnover realised through cruise shipping by coach operators, railway, travel agents for shore excursions, utilities, supply and disposal companies, shipping agents, pilots and port operators.
