Port of Kiel has scored a record year
In the cruise sector, the PORT OF KIEL recorded a total of 1,187,148 passengers on 214 calls last year. All major European shipping companies were represented with several vessels in the Baltic Sea port.
As the home port of the new flagship of MSC Cruises, the MSC Euribia, and first calls by North American shipping companies such as Disney Cruise Line, the port of Kiel is also very popular with an international visitor base. With the arrival of the “Hanseatic nature” on 4th January and expected follow-up calls in January and February, winter cruises are also becoming increasingly important in Kiel.
For this year’s season, the port of Kiel is once again expecting passenger numbers around the 1 million mark with a total of 173 calls.
“This high number of passengers with slightly fewer ship calls is due on the one hand to the large ship classes that are increasingly calling at Kiel in the coming season and on the other to the pleasingly high demand in cruise tourism,” emphasises Dr Dirk Claus, Managing Director of SEEHAFEN KIEL GmbH & Co. KG., “for us, this is an dimension that we can handle well at our facilities and with our established processes.”
For the port operator, sustainable growth and the continuous further development of its own processes are particularly important. The shore-side power supply for cruise ships, which the PORT OF KIEL has been consistently promoting together with the shipping companies for several years, will also remain a key area of the cruise business. For the 2024 season, the port operator expects for the first time to supply 100 cruise calls with shore-side green electricity via the existing two plants. With an expansion of the shore-side power plant at the Ostseekai, which is scheduled to go into operation in 2025, the port will complete its shore-side power infrastructure and have sufficient supply options for ships at all major ferry and cruise berths. The port of Kiel already has one of the most extensive facilities in Europe. In 2023, almost half of all calls by cruise ships and ferries in Kiel were supplied with shore power.
(Port of Kiel has scored a record year – Port of Kiel)
