Kiel Port Marks 2,500th Cruise Ship Visit
Kiel is today (Saturday, 13th Aug.) celebrating the arrival of its 2,500th cruise ship visitor Cunard Line’s “Queen Elizabeth”, which berthed this morning to mark the event. The President of the City of Kiel, Hans-Werner Tovar paid tribute to the occasion during a reception at the Ostseekai Cruise Terminal.
“2500 visits are an enormous accomplishment and one achieved over many years of partnership and co-operation involving the port itself, shipping companies and service providers. I am proud that Kiel is one of the leading cruise shipping ports in northern Europe”, he said.
To commemorate the 2500th visit, an artist’s wooden sculpture of a pile mooring was unveiled at the terminal. Dr Dirk Claus, Managing Director of the Port of Kiel (Seehafen Kiel GmbH & Co. KG) said “sea tourism has grown faster than most other sectors and cruises are today one of our port’s most important businesses”.
Anja Tabarelli, who is the Sales and Marketing Director of Cunard Lines in Germany, said “Kiel is my home town and so I am personally very pleased that we are able to celebrate this anniversary with our “Queen Elizabeth”. When she called here for the first time in July 2012 as the youngest of the Cunard Queens she was celebrated by the people of Kiel into the early hours of the morning. You could say that there is already a very special relationship between the ship and the port, with the result that we are always happy to come back here. We will do that next year as well and we look forward to our call on June 21st 2017 and to celebrating with our guests and the people of Kiel”.
A total 4.5 million cruise ship passengers have to date travelled to and from Kiel. Because of its investment in Berth 1 in the Ostuferhafen, Kiel has, since 2014, also been able to accept three big and several smaller cruise ships all at the same time. Dirk Claus said, “We are in a very good position with our terminal facilities. The developments of the past year and an increase in passenger totals of nearly 30% point this up”.
