Fjord Line, the Norwegian ferry company that has introduced two lng powered newbuildings between Norway and Denmark, says it expects to transport nearly 1 million passengers aboard its four ships in 2014, more than twice as many as in 2013.
"We expect a 90% increase in passenger numbers for the January through July period of 2014 compared to the same seven month period of 2013, and believe we will more than double the number for the full year," said Fjord Line CEO Ingvald Fardal in a statement.
Last July, Stavangerfjord entered service as the first of Fjord Line's two large, eco-friendly cruise ferries, while an identical sister ship, the Bergensfjord, joined the fleet in March this year. Both ships were built at the Fosen shipyard in Norway. The ships serve the routes between the Norwegian cities of Bergen and Stavanger and Hirtshals, Denmark, as well as between Hirtshals and Langesund, Norway.
Stavagerfjord and Bergensfjord are of 32,000 gross tons and they are the only major passengers vessels that only use lng as fuel; other ships that use it can also operate on oil by using dual fuel engines.
"We had 109,000 guests on the Bergen-Stavanger-Hirtshals line in the first seven months of last year, a number that is expected to increase nearly 82% to 198,000 for the same period of this year. The Hirtshals-Langesund line opened last July, with more than 17,000 guests in its first two weeks of operation, while so far this year the number of passengers has hit about 125,000," says Fardal.
For 2014 so far, Fjord Line can also report that about 137,000 passengers have taken the company's express line between Kristiansand, Norway and Hirtshals, and that some 48,000 travelled on the new service between Sandefjord, Norway and Strömstad, Sweden. That means Fjord Line's total bookings for the period will be about 508,000, compared to 267,000 for the seven months ending in July 2013.
"Our projections suggest that, for 2014 as a whole, the passenger count for all four of our ships will exceed 950,000 guests, or more than double the number recorded for the full year of 2013. As a result, Fjord Line's share of the cruise ferry market between Norway and the European Union is expected to increase to about 15% in 2014 compared to 7% a year earlier, which we see as extremely satisfactory," underscores Fardal.
