Assagenti, Banchero: “Docks Upgrade”

Genoa - Genoa plays an important role at a global level in tourism and the cruise sector, and the upgrading of terrestrial infrastructures is essential to ensure the continuity of traffic. This is the request made by the annual assembly of Assagenti, the association of Genoese ship’s brokers and shipping agents, which has put its spotlight on tourism as it represents 13% of national GDP, and the cruise sector in particular. “More careful and scheduled maintenance is required. The upgrading of docks and port infrastructures is necessary to ensure the continuity of such vital traffic for the area, which received 212 calls from cruise ships in 2017,” said Alberto Banchero, president of Assagenti, at the association’s assembly. It is not so much a problem of propeller power eroding the docks, because the Rex, which is three times smaller than the current cruise ships, had more propeller power: the weakening of the docks today is measured by the number of calls, which has greatly increased and “leads to greater stress”. Flavio Destefanis, Chief of Technical and Environmental Management at the Port System Authority of Genoa and Savona, promised: “Our commitment is to carry out systematic maintenance on all the docks”. “Logistics and tourism are two of the three fundamental pillars in which we want to invest in order to make Genoa grow,” emphasised Mayor Marco Bucci, speaking at the assembly, which opened with a minute of silence to commemorate the Pilots’ Tower tragedy. “We are working towards all the cities of Liguria becoming home ports for one cruise company or another,” said Regional President Giovanni Toti, “and more generally to encourage tourism and cruises. At the airport, for example, to connect ship traffic with passenger traffic at our airport.” The president of the Colombo airport, Paolo Odone, has asked Costa Crociere and MSC Crociere for a meeting to ensure that airlines use Genoa’s airport.