The Marine Façade, St. Petersburg’s cruise port, has ended the navigation season 2017 with record-breaking results. The terminal handled 560 000 passengers, up 20 percent in comparison to the season 2016.
The navigation season 2017 started on May 2 and finished on October 17 with the last call of a ship bringing more than 4500 guests, a port’s representative said to the media.
The figure of 560 000 passengers is well above 456 000 which were seen last year. The year 2018 is predicted to see a rise of 8 percent resulting in 600 000 which will be another record.
Since putting into operation in 2008, The Marine Façade has totally served more 3.5 million passengers of 180 nationalities. The biggest consumer segment is the Germans followed by the U. S. citizens and the Brits correspondingly, with the Chinese as the most rapidly growing category.
The port has seven berths capable of serving cruise ships of up to 340 meters in length and with a draft of up to 8.8 meters. It is going to upgrade two berths to be able to handle two 330-meter ships at the same time to keep up with the rise in traffic. The first phase of the upgrade is to start next year and to be finished by the end of 2018, the second phase is said to be finished in 2020.
As we wrote, the St. Petersburg cruise terminal will also change its disembarkation policy to make the outgoing traffic running more smoothly which can impact a significant share of tourists. It has also limited taxi operations.
Photo credit: https://vk.com/passengerportspb