Venice loses 100,000 cruise passengers

Genoa - Two fewer. The Costa NeoClassica and the Oosterdam have removed Venice from their itineraries. It is a blow that will cost the city almost 100,000 cruise tourists next year: the situation of uncertainty that has persisted in the sector for some time is to blame. The uncertainty began with the decree that banned large ships from passing in front of San Marco, only smaller units under 96,000 tonnes are allowed on that route. The effects of that decision are now beginning to be felt: the American giant Carnival Group is cancelling the two ships’ calls. Carnival (together with Royal Caribbean, MSCE and the Turkish company Global Liman) recently bought a stake in VTP, the company that controls Venice’s maritime station. Costa Cruises cancelled 24 calls and shifted 58,000 passengers to Bari. Holland America, a brand that has always been a part of the Carnival Group, eliminated 10 calls in 2017, taking away over 30,000 passengers from next year’s projected traffic. These decisions do not come as a surprise: Venice has had trouble accepting the 96,000-tonne limit, because the result is that although the ships coming to the port are smaller, they are also older and therefore more polluting. However the market is already dominated - and it will be even more so with the ships that are to due to be delivered in the coming months - by mega units of over 170,000 tonnes, which carry more passengers, are more comfortable and better performing from an economic point of view.

Venice is one of the capital cities of Mediterranean cruises, but the city is in danger of paying a very high price if it is cut out of this market segment. Or perhaps the bill is already on the table: the number of passengers in 2016 will drop below a million and a half, which once seemed to be the city’s fall-back level. We must recall that in 2013, 1.8 million tourists set foot on Venetian soil disembarking from cruise ships. But the number of ships has increased, which is the paradoxical part of the Venice effect. The limit imposed on tonnage is bringing older and smaller ships to the city. These ships carry fewer passengers than in the past arrived at the maritime terminal’s docks. Local newspapers including Il Corriere del Veneto, report that last year there were 8 more ships, but thirty thousand fewer passengers. That’s 41 more ships compared to 2014, but the final balance was a loss of 183,000 passengers compared to that period. And thus the city is in danger of being cut out of cruise ship circuits: Trieste is close enough – although not that close, truth be told - to become the port of Venice. It is already being tested, but the over land link is not so appealing. All the while new itineraries and destinations are being created in the Adriatic. At the very least it would be sufficient to find a different route to bring ships to the city’s docks, like the new Tresse Canal. Or perhaps, as Duferco is proposing, what is needed is a new terminal that would go to the root of the problem. A simpler way to improve the situation would be for Rome to give a clear indication about what is going to happen.