Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - 15:00 by ce-press
The first of the Meraviglia-plus ships, MSC Grandiosa, will be christened in Hamburg on November 2, 2019. Meanwhile MSC Meraviglia made her maiden call on April 29 marking the start of her new, as well as the brand’s best and most accessible-ever season, in Northern Europe.
Pierfrancesco Vago, MSC Cruises executive chairman, commented: “Since our last christening in Germany of MSC Magnifica in 2010, as a company we have embarked on a journey of strong growth and the German cruise guest has embraced our brand and our offering in a strong way. We hold a special relationship with Germany overall and we are looking forward to celebrating with our German partners next November as well as welcoming our international guests to this historic port, rich in maritime tradition and heritage.”
The first call of the season came from AIDAsol on April 7 under the navigation of Germany’s first female cruiseship captain, Nicole Langosch.
This year Hamburg is expecting 220 calls from 50 ships operated by 26 shipping companies and more than 880,000 cruise passengers, an increase of 10% compared to 2017.
Highlights of the year included the Hafengeburtstag port festival which served as the backdrop for the ship launching ceremony of TUI’s Mein Schiff 1 on May 11. During the season there will be nine further first-time arrivals from vessels such as AIDAnova with more than 5,000 passengers and MSC Meraviglia with some 4,500 passengers on board. Another welcome visitor to the port is Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2 which will be calling five times.
AIDA Cruises will be the shipping company with the largest number of vessels calling: eight vessels will be arriving 88 times. MSC Cruises follows with 36 calls.
