Tuesday, December 16, 2014 - 10:14 by copenhagen
Region Gotland and Copenhagen Malmö Port (CMP) today formally signed an agreement with the aim of making Gotland a principal new attraction for the Baltic's cruise tourists. Preparations to extend the port are fully underway, including the marine archaeological survey.
Region Gotland and Copenhagen Malmö Port (CMP) today signed a lease agreement which entails the region investing around SEK 250 million kronor in a new cruise ship quay, with CMP renting the quay for 20 years.
- "Now it's full steam ahead for all engines! The construction project is proceeding with planning and various surveys on site, and together with the island's business community we will ensure that Gotland is ready when the quay is completed in 2018", says the regional board's chairman Åke Svensson.
CMP has long experience of developing cruise ship ports and the port in Copenhagen has received a number of awards, including as cruise ship port of the year.
- "We are looking forward to contributing our experience to the collaboration with Region Gotland. This is a significant undertaking for us as we can offer our customers a more attractive cruise route. The fact that we will thereby also be contributing to more tourists visiting Gotland is very satisfying", says Johan Röstin, CEO of Copenhagen Malmö Port AB.
As recently as one year ago the cruise ship quay was a project which almost everyone on Gotland wanted to go ahead, but which nobody believed would happen. A meeting during last year's Almedalen Week sowed the seed for the collaboration which suddenly resolved all the stumbling blocks. With a strong collaborative partner on-board the investment suddenly became significantly less risky and in August all the local authority parties backed the final draft agreement.
The marine archaeological surveys outside Kopparsvik commenced in November, and geotechnical surveys on the sea bed will take place in the spring. The actual construction will start with dredging in spring 2016 and two years later the first cruise liners will put into Gotland's new cruise centre.
- "Constructing a cruise ship port and establishing an attractive cruise destination is an extensive operation, with a large number of public and private actors having to work well together. This is one of the most important reasons behind Copenhagen's success, and something on which we place a lot of importance. The start of the project in Visby has been particularly promising", says Arnt Møller Pedersen, Cruise Manager in Copenhagen Malmö Port AB.
During the period 2000 to 2012, the number of cruise passengers in the Baltic increased from 1.1 million to 4.2. A cruise ship quay in Visby is estimated to increase the number of arrivals to around 150 cruise ships per year, with average passenger numbers of about 1,700 per ship, and revenues generated from tourism of around SEK 90-130 million per year.*
CMP is Northern Europe's leading cruise ship port with some 346 ships and 800,000 passengers a year from more than 150 countries arriving in Copenhagen and Malmö.
For images, visit www.gotland.se/76360
