Why Cruise Ship Companies like Hamburg

One factor of the great success of port of Hamburg as a cruise shipping venue is the extremely reliable working port service segment.

One factor of the great success of port of Hamburg as a cruise shipping venue is the extremely reliable working port service segment.

In the cruise industry it is very much essential that the ships are precisely on time. This is particularly important for the short trips. The universal port of Hamburg has gained its very good image in the time-sensitive container shipping segment and has now transferred it also into the very ambitious cruise vessels. โ€œIt must be a precision landingโ€, says Stefan Frommann, member of the board of the Friedrich G. Frommann GmbH. The worldwide active company belongs to a small circle of companies who are selling and supplying fuels and lube oils in Hamburg. The company uses, among others, four bunker boats. The latest and newest, โ€œSeeveโ€ and โ€œDresden IIโ€ supplied recently fuel and oils to the โ€œQueen Mary 2โ€. The huge cruise liner moored in Hamburg in the morning and left the berth in the evening for a mini-cruise to Oslo.

Already three days later, the much-loved cruise liner, which has had its very first visit to the Elbe-City in 2004, will be back in Hamburg. At this time the annual cruising balance of the British Cunard Line will be presented on board the companyโ€™s flagship. In the evening on the same day the 345 m long vessel leaves the port of Hamburg.

hat much is clear: โ€œThe visit by the โ€œQueen Mary 2โ€ to Hamburg on 6November 2013 will go down in the annals of Hamburgโ€™s cruise industry and become an unforgettable shipโ€™s call for everyone concerned,โ€ said Frank Horch, Senator of the Ministry for Economic, Transport and Innovation Affairs. The visit was not only the 168th call of the current season but also marked the arrival of the 500 000th cruise guest in the city. โ€œFor the first time ever Hamburg has achieved this magical mark in a single season and, moreover, done so two years earlier than planned,โ€ announced the visibly proud senator.

This year the Hamburg cruise season will, for the first time, be ending on 31. December. โ€œInitial estimates by the association forecast some 555 000 passengers by the end of the season,โ€ said Gerd Drossel, HCC Managing Director. This represents 29 per cent growth over the previous year (2012: 430 329). In total 177 cruise ships called at the Port of Hamburg (+ 10 per cent over the previous year). 167 of the calls were by ships beginning or ending their cruises, including 32 calls during which there was a partial turn-around, ten were transit calls. The percentage of turn-around guests beginning or ending their cruise in Hamburg increased to 94 per cent (2012: 89 per cent). โ€œAccording to these figures Hamburg was Germanyโ€™s most frequented embarkation or disembarkation port in 2013, once again topping the German cruise port rankings, as was already the case in 2012,โ€ stated Drossel.

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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