The success of the Polish stand at the Seatrade Cruise & River Cruise Convention in Hamburg

14.09.2015

The Seatrade Cruise & River Cruise Convention is the largest and most well-respected trade-fair in Europe dedicated to the cruise market, attracting hundreds of industry reps every year, including representatives of key cruise liners, seaports, organisations that promote particular destinations, tour operators and representatives of media dedicated to sea tourism.

This year's event took place between 9-11 September in Hamburg, where the Port of Gdansk along with Gdansk Tourist Organisation presented their offer under the title of Gdansk - your cruise to Poland.

Following tradition, on the second day of the fair the city and port prepared a range of attractions for the visitors. The so-called Polish Day attracted a huge crowd who, with visible enthusiasm, came along to the Gdansk stand to discover the true flavours of the region, its music, customs and traditions characteristic of Pomerania.

The Kashubian music and Pomeranian hospitality attracted a lot of interest, hence Gdansk's presence at the fair was memorable not only for the guests, but also the exhibitors.

Such success should not be a surprise because for years Gdansk has been highly rated among passengers as one of the three most attractive destinations for sea trips while cruising on the Baltic Sea.

The Baltic area is an intensively developing market for cruises in which the year on year increase in the number of passengers has been 10 percent on average while the growth in the number of ships serviced has exceeded 3 percent. In the year 2000 the Baltic Sea was visited annually by just over one million passengers, whereas last year their number had surged by a factor or 4. The disproportion between the growth of tourist traffic compared with the increase in the number of ships shows that from year to year the Baltic Sea welcomes increasingly larger vessels, as has been observed at the Port of Gdansk over the past several years. For example, over the last decade, the volume of this type of vessel visiting the Port of Gdansk has increased by 50%.

The huge interest in Gdansk and several years of close cooperation in this matter between the port and the city are paying off. This year, according to estimates, the number of passengers in one docking at the Port of Gdansk grew by 30%. It is worth mentioning that last year, this high growth rate when compared with the overall market within our basin was the fourth best result after ports such as Skagen, Gothenburg and Klaipeda.

The success of the Gdansk stand at the Seatrade Cruise & River Cruise Convention is therefore the best proof that consistency in fine-tuning our offer along with systematic promotion and close cooperation between the port and the city can be bear tangible results on the market.