Coastal shipping – Cold feet due to Omicron, optimism for after Easter

After cruises and hotels, coastal shipping could not avoid the negative effects of the spread of the Omicron mutation throughout the world and Greece.

According to industry executives, from the first days of the new year, bookings on coastal shipping vessels, which traditionally at such times in previous years were seen mainly from Western Europe but also the Far East, for this year have been frozen. “If in 2019 we had 10,000 reservations these days, now we do not have even 1,000,” an industry executive told “NEA” newspaper.

And coastal shipping, as another executive notes, makes sense to experience what the tourism industry as a whole is experiencing at the moment, a frozen interest in vacations expressed by not being included in companies’ booking systems. “It makes sense when a pandemic prevails to see pessimism,” he added.

All the interlocutors of “NEA” agree, however, that the more the situation with the course of the pandemic is clarified and the more the coronavirus subsides, the more the interest will increase. The commercial departments of all ferry companies are optimistic that from next May passenger traffic will begin to rise to levels much higher than 2021. Something similar is estimated by the hotel sector of the country, which believes that due to Omicron the season will start the end of the second quarter of 2022. The first positive sign is expected for Orthodox Easter, which this year falls on April 24, but where all Greek tourism will work mainly with Greeks. Immediately afterward, the summer tourist season will start. In any case, for this year, tourists from the Far East (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, etc.) are considered a lost cause.

And there are gripes over subsidies. The freezing of reservations is taking place at a time when the payments by the Ministry of Shipping to the shipping companies to serve ferry lines is frozen. Towards the end of the year, some “consolation” money was given to the shipping companies, as it was said, while the ministry still owes more than 60 million euros. As the shipping agents point out to “NEA”, the delay in the payment of these subsidies has now reached one year in some cases and they emphasize that the aid of 26 million euros was never given until the end of 2021, as promised by the Minister of Shipping.

Finally, another issue that currently concerns coastal shipping is whether and when the relevant platform will be opened by the Ministry of Finance, in which companies will be able to submit investment proposals under the Recovery Fund. As industry players explain, at the moment there is nothing specific and what is expected is that the relevant platform will be opened within the next month by the Deputy Minister of Finance, Theodoros Skylakakis, in order to start the procedures for submitting any aid programs in the direction of fleet renewal.