Tuesday, January 2, 2024 - 18:44 by ce-press
Copenhagen Malmo Port (CMP) expects record numbers of about 50,000 passengers and 18 calls to Copenhagen and Visby during the typically off-season months of November 2023 through January 2024.
For Copenhagen it is a chance for visitors to experience the Danish capital in new ways and for visitors to the medieval Unesco world heritage city of Visby to experience the Swedish island of Gotland during Winter. For local businesses and cultural institutions, it is an opportunity to experience visitors in what is normally a slower season for tourism.
The targeted work of all actors has paid off and more and more cruiselines are choosing to call at this time of year whether as one-off cruises or as winter deployments, for example AIDAnova calling Copenhagen seven times and Hapag Lloyd’s Hanseatic Nature making five calls to Copenhagen and Visby. “These numbers highlight the great interest and commitment from the German market to the region,” comments Luis de Carvalho, commercial cruise director CMP.
Furthermore, a high number of cruiseships called CMP around the festive turn of the year 2023/2024: seven Christmas calls in Copenhagen and two in Visby, as well as two cruiseships spending New Year’s Eve in Copenhagen.
“CMP is working with all destination stakeholders, cruiselines, CruiseCopenhagen, Cruise Baltic, Cruise Europe and other ports in the region to create products and offers that reflect the different times of the year. Our goal is to continue to expand the season into the autumn, winter, and spring months to complement the already successful summer season and create an ‘all year around’ season. This is a work in progress, but we see great interest from cruiselines which gives us the motivation to continue our work,” says de Carvalho.
This year CMP expects to receive cruiseships in Copenhagen on all 12 months of the year for the first time ever, proving that Copenhagen is indeed a year-round destination.
In 2023, CMP hosted 389 calls and 940,000 passengers in Malmo, Visby and Copenhagen.
When it comes to environmental credentials, CMP has the aspiration to become one of the world’s most sustainable ports and is under way to become CO2 neutral in its own operations by 2025. Between 2020 and 2022 CMP has reduced CO2 emissions in own operations (GHG Scope 1+2) with 57%. This is equivalent to a reduction of 1.231 tonnes CO2e.
Onshore power supply (OPS) is expected to be ready in 2025, with connection points at CMP’s Langelinie and Oceankaj terminals and to be at full capacity in 2028. In this respect, Copenhagen City and Port Development Agency (By & Havn), who are developing the cruise OPS facilities in Copenhagen that are to be operated by CMP, announced on November 29 2023 that they were ready to enter into an agreement with the contractor PowerCon. The cruise OPS is co-funded by the EU.
