MSC, two more mega-ships at Genoa

Genoa - As anticipated by Secolo XIX/Meditelegraph, the Swiss-Italian cruise company MSC Cruises has officially confirmed their project to base two more ships in Genoa between 2017 and 2018, in addition to those already based there. This year, MSC will bring a total of 887,000 cruise passengers to this port (+25.5% compared to last year). This much was revealed yesterday by the company’s managing director, Gianni Onorato from Le Havre, where he celebrated the christening of the largest containership in the world, “MSC Sveva” (19,000 TEU total capacity) operated by the parent company of MSC Cruises, Mediterranean Shipping Company (the world’s second largest container shipping carrier), the ship was dedicated by the owner Gianluigi Aponte to 5 year old Sveva, Onorato’s youngest daughter. In 2017, then, the “MSC Meraviglia” will be based in Genoa, a cruise ship with a capacity of 5,700 passengers that will bring more than 50,000 visitors to the city.

In 2018 the “MSC Seaside”, which was initially destined to be based in Venice, will also be using Genoa as home port (capacity of 5,200 passengers), unless of course, in the meantime an agreement is reached or the necessary works in the Laguna are completed allowing access to vessels with a gross tonnage greater than 96 thousand tons. The latter is a ship designed for summer routes, says Onorato, and therefore it will be based in Genoa only for the summer season, while during the winter it will be moved to the Southern hemisphere, to South America.

According to the MSC leader, the Achilles’ heel of Genoa is its airport, which should welcome more low-cost airlines (“following Barcelona’s example”), they the only ones that can really offer the best possible service to cruise passengers, as opposed to the organizational rigidity and higher costs of charter flights. Onorato is offering MSC as a platform to sell Genoa around the world: the company distributes four million catalogues per year and coordinates 45 websites on which Genoa is highlighted. An opportunity that the manager is certain can be exploited in the negotiations between the airport and the airlines to promote tourism. The “Meraviglia” will be christened in the port of Le Havre, like the Sveva yesterday: a sign of recognition towards France, “which has built 20 out of our 23 ships, since Fincantieri has no available slots for us.”

In terms of new construction, the project of MSC World class ships, currently in the design phase at Saint-Nazaire, “is ongoing,” says Onorato, and those ships are being designed to sail in any part of the world, although they will be used by MSC to break into the Chinese and the Eastern market.