81 cruise ships are due to visit the Port of Riga next year, which is 15 more than this year, the port’s board chairman, Sandis Steins, has told the LETA News Agency.
Next year’s cruise season promise to be active in Riga and with an upward trend. “The port has been told that there will be ships with larger passenger capacity, and that allowed us to forecast that we will welcome as many as 100,000 cruise passengers,” Steins says.
He also noted that the cruise season this year was also successful at the Port of Riga, with 66 cruise ships, or four more than last year.
“We had five cruise ships in December, which was a record for winter months, and so this year has marked the culmination of efforts to attract cruise operators to Riga during the winter period,” Steins explains. “This is considered to be a low season for cruise tourism in the Baltic Sea region.”
Next year’s cruise season is due to run from February until December.
The Port of Riga handled 78,599 cruise ship passengers during the first eleven months of 2024, which was a drop of 1.3% in comparison to the same period last year.
As LETA has reported in the past, the Port of Riga welcomed a total of 81,618 cruise ship passengers in 2023, which was 7.9% more than during the previous season. The largest numbers came from Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Port of Riga is also Latvia’s largest port in terms of handled cargo.
Source: BNS
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