This year’s season of passenger cruisers at the Port of Gdynia will be opened on 24 April by a ship already know to the quays of Gdynia, the MSC Poesia flying the Panama flag. It will be one of the three calls of this 293.8 meters long vessel at the Port of Gdynia we hosted for the first time in 2013.

The shipowner is MSC Cruises – the largest Italian cruise line. The ships of the MSC fleet are known for their modern design and high standard. MSC Cruises offers trips to the Mediterranean Sea, Norwegian Fiords, the Caribbean, South America and the Arab Emirates. At present MCS Cruises is one of the most popular cruise liners on the Polish market. Christened on 5 April 2008 in Great Britain, MSC Poesia stuns with its charm and beauty, as expected of a true muse. The vessel has 12 decks and can board three thousand passengers looked after by 987 crew members.

“The importance of Poland on the world’s cruise map continues to grow, contributing to boost our prestige. Passenger cruisers at the Port of Gdynia have a long-standing tradition, going back to the times of transatlantic ships like MS Batory or MS Piłsudski, “ emphasizes Adam Meller, president of the Port of Gdynia Authority S.A. “Port of Gdynia receives world’s largest passenger ships, generating income for the company, but also for the entire region. We are happy that this year as much as 120 thousand tourists from abroad will visit Gdynia and Pomerania, becoming ambassadors of Poland.”

In total, 51 calls of passenger ships are expected in 2019 at the Port of Gdynia. This year’s record will belong to a cruiser named “Norwegian Getaway” – the longest and also the largest in terms of tonnage, which first arrived in Gdynia on 23 June 2017. Norwegian Getaway, sailing under the Bahamas flag belongs to the Norwegian Cruise Line ship owner company, is 325.7 meters long (GT 145,655) and holds more than 2000 cabins and apartments, being able to host nearly 4000 passengers. The legendary line Cunard, a synonym for luxury and exclusive tourist cruises for many years, is sending this year its Queen Victoria to the Port of Gdynia, which already visited our port in 2008. Queen Victoria will arrive on 24 May and 3 September. In terms of number of calls, this year’s record will belong to AIDAmar, which will visit us 16 times. The last call of passenger ships is planned for 7 October this year.

A quick reminder – in 2018 Port of Gdynia hosted 50 large cruisers, whose average length was nearly 260 meters and the number of passengers was more than 100 thousand. Each of the passengers “left” 80 euro on average in the region of Pomerania, which totals to 8 million euro. This year we forecast an increase of each of these figures: massive vessels will land at the quays of Gdynia 51 times. The average length of cruisers expected in the upcoming season is 264,89 meters. The Port of Gdynia is the only Polish port able to receive such large vessels, which is why our success may be measured in the number of passengers arriving at our port.

From the very beginning of maritime Poland, the Port Gdynia was a home port for such great ships flying the white-and-red flag as “Polonia”, “Kosciuszko”, “Pulaski”, “Piłsudski”, “Sobieski”, “Chrobry”, “Jagiełło”, “Batory” and “Stefan Batory”.

A detailed list of ships including names, lengths and dates of calls may be found at the Port of Gdynia website:  

https://www.port.gdynia.pl/pl/wydarzenia/wycieczkowce/1381-wycieczkowce-2019

Pre-season summary:

51 listed vessels

approx. 120 thousand passengers

approx. 42 thousand crew members

20 unique ships (no repetitions)

16 – the largest number of calls of a single ship (AIDAmar, line: Aida Cruises) (https://www.aida.de/kreuzfahrt/schiffe/aidamar.23412.html)

Norwegian Getaway – the largest ship: 325.7 meters long, 3 963 passengers, 1 646 crew members (https://www.ncl.com/fr/en/cruise-ship/getaway), dates: 2019-06-27, 2019-08-20

Interesting ship:

“WORLD ODYSSEY” – a training project, cruises are organized by Semester at Sea, and the ship operator – V-Ships. The smallest ship expected to arrive this season (175.3 meters long). More info at:https://www.semesteratsea.org/life-at-sea/our-ship/

Date: 2019-09-15

“Queen Victoria” – looks like a classic transatlantic, dates: 2019-05-24, 2019-09-03

https://www.cunard.com/en-gb?ASCookie=AEMOrigin