Greece is gearing up for more cruiseship arrivals and revenue records

In 2024, the cruise industry‘s performance in Greece will exceed the levels of 2019, which are seen as rising in 2023. This assessment was recounted to ot.gr by the honorary president of the Union of Cruise Shipowners and Shipping Agencies (EEKFN ) Mr. Theodoros Kontes who pointed out that in 2023, Greece is expected to host 3,480 cruise ship arrivals and 3.3 – 3.5 million passenger arrivals.

As he pointed out this year the industry is expected to close with 3,000 cruise ship arrivals and 2.6 – 2.7 million passenger arrivals to Greek destinations.

2022 will be a Happy New Year

Given the situation with the pandemic, 2022 was also a relatively good year for cruising as the industry gradually restarted. Greece was among the first choices, with Piraeus and other large ports (Corfu, Heraklion, etc.) serving a large number of ships for home porting, says Mr. Kontes.

What mainly stood out in 2022 was the reduced passenger occupancy, (50-60%) mainly on mega ships. On the contrary, it seems that small ships and those with a capacity of up to 600-800 passengers, including expedition luxury cruisers, have a satisfactory occupancy of up to 95%.

Of course, due to the reduced number of passengers as well as the huge competition in the prices offered in various programs, the revenues for 2022 are expected to be of the order of 350 million euros compared to more than 500 million euros in 2019.

Further improvement is expected for the year 2024 and we hope that this will be the year we reach and maybe surpass the results of the year 2019, says Mr. Contes

He also adds that the next few years will continue to see a further increase in cruises at a rate of 6% per year as well as an increase in the number of tourists from new markets, and thus normality will be fully restored.

War and new trends

However, recent events such as the Russian-Ukrainian war as well as geopolitical issues in the region will play their role in the immediate future development in the Eastern Mediterranean. The war has adversely affected and created problems in the industry, not only from the reduced number of passengers they offered, but more so from the limited number of crews working in the industry, creating problems in the operation of cruise ships, particularly in the hotel sector of ships.

Mr. Kontes also referred to some new trends recorded such as the new constructions of ships of smaller capacity, and the reduced orders for mega ships.

This trend for smaller capacity ships is now a reality with new constructions demonstrating sizes of up to 1000 passengers.

The two years of the pandemic, our interlocutor added, left serious financial problems for the companies in the sector as many were forced to sell the older ships for recycling while some went bankrupt.

Back in 2019

2019 was considered a record year for the Cruise industry worldwide, but particularly for Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Greece’s 2019 results with 3,979 arrivals and 5,552,384 passenger arrivals were truly outstanding and initial forecasts for the following year 2020 were for 4,220 ship arrivals and over 5.8 million passenger arrivals. But the covid-19 pandemic, which developed in 2020 and spread worldwide with the well-known, horrible results in the Cruise industry as well, brought the absolute upheaval at a global level, including the region of Greece.

So, only small boats and some others that tried to carry out certain programs contributed to Greece having only 210 ship arrivals and approximately 67,530 passenger arrivals, which admittedly were very disappointing results.

But timidly the sector again started the 2021 tourist season with satisfactory figures compared to other destinations, reaching 1,957 dockings and 1,310,662 passenger arrivals in the territory, certainly applying the strict protocols in the ports and on ships resulting in a decrease to a large extent infections.