Wednesday, October 18, 2017 - 09:09 by ce-press
Ingvar Mathisen has been appointed port director at the Port of Oslo. The board of directors was very clear it wanted the focus to be on the core business, ie port development and increasing cargo and passenger throughput. Mathisen previously held the same position at the Port of Bodo, where he remained for 12 years.
Mathisen commented: “For various reasons the number of cruise passengers visiting Oslo have dropped from about 312,000 in the record year [2011] to about 171,000 in 2016. When I started in the port business, Oslo and Bergen competed in being the largest cruise port in Norway. In order to put the decline of cruise passengers into perspective: if Oslo from 2006 had grown proportionally compared with Bergen, we would reached about 461,000 passengers in 2016.”
He added: “Oslo should be a natural port of call on both a Norwegian fjord cruise and a Baltic cruise and has a great potential as turnaround port as well. My goal is that Oslo regains its position as the leading cruise port in Norway. As the capital city it has space, attractions, guides and buses enough to meet the demands of more calls and growing ships.”
In order to achieve this goal Port of Oslo has entered into a partnership with Visit Oslo in financing a position dedicated towards revitalising Oslo as the cruise capital of Norway. In this respect Agnes Mathiesen has been appointed to the position of project manager cruise, Visit Oslo. She has worked in the travel/cruise industry for more than 20 years, both in USA and Norway and most recently was employed by Flam AS.
Marketing manager for cruise and passengers Port of Oslo, Anette Braekke, commented: “We are very happy to welcome Agnes to our cruise team. With her experience and knowledge about the business, we are confident that she is the right person to promote Oslo as the most exciting cruise destination in Norway with the enthusiasm and energy needed. The rest of the team will support her in every way to attract the cruiselines to our four quays in the city centre and revitalise Oslo also as the cruise capital of Norway.”
