Warnemünde is Germany’s number one cruise port
On 17 October the cruise liner AIDAmar will tie up at berth P8 and thus end the successful cruise shipping season in Rostock’s Baltic Sea resort.
In all, the holiday ships that called in Warnemünde 175 times this year carried 354,000 passengers, creating an annual passenger volume of more than 700,000 by embarking and disembarking at the port.
According to a definition by the Cruise Europe Association on the method of counting cruise passengers, which adds the embarking (132,000) to the disembarking (131,000) passengers – who are, however, largely identical – and to the transit passengers (222,000), the number for Rostock-Warnemünde comes to 485,000.
“181 port calls by cruise liners had been announced for this year. Unfortunately, six port calls were cancelled due to storms and technical problems. Nevertheless Warnemünde was again the most frequented cruise port in Germany. We thank all the cruise shipping companies, service providers and public authorities for the good cooperation this year”, summarizes Jens A. Scharner, Managing Director of the Rostock Port Development Company.
Of the 175 port calls by 39 cruise vessels this year, 163 were serviced in Warnemünde and twelve at the overseas port. The largest vessel to set course for the mouth of river Warnow this season was the Royal Princess with a length of 330 meters and a gross register tonnage of 142,714. The vessel, which was commissioned in May 2014, is able to carry around 3600 passengers and 1350 crew.
All or some of the passengers were changed during 92 port calls. Rostock-based shipping company AIDA Cruises for instance sent two ships on Baltic Sea cruises from the base port Warnemünde: AIDAdiva and AIDAmar. This season, 28 international shipping companies included the Baltic Sea port on river Warnow in their route planning.
16 percent of all cruise tourists visited Berlin
Of the 354,000 cruise travellers the majority this year were Germans at 110,000, followed by 55,000 Americans, 27,000 British, 23,000 Spaniards, 17,000 Italians, 15,000 Canadians, 10,000 Australians and 97,000 tourists from 148 other nations. The ships also carried 133,000 crew members from 129 countries, more than one third of whom went on shore leave.
16 percent of all cruise guests coming to Warnemünde, that is around 57,000, went on a day trip to Berlin by train or coach this season. About 165,000 passengers set out to discover Warnemünde, Rostock or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on day trips and more than 130,000 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 Euro 15 million during the 2015 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 realized through cruise shipping by coach operators, railway, travel agents for shore excursions, utilities, supply and disposal companies, shipping agents, pilots and port operators. “It’s a long value-added chain and that’s why the cruise business in Warnemünde is so important for the city and the federal state”, explains Jens A. Scharner.
(Rostock-Warnemünde – Hafen Rostock)
