Germany: Hamburg Hosts Meeting of Maritime Tourism Industry

When the Seatrade Europe Cruise and River Cruise Convention, the leading congress and trade fair for the European cruise industry, opens its doors tomorrow morning, it will be the sixth time that Hamburg has become the meeting point of the maritime tourism industry.

More than 250 exhibitors from 50 countries, including ports and tourism destinations, tour operators, hotel and restaurant outfitters, ship equipment suppliers, IT and communication companies, shipyards and shipbuilders will showcase products and services over the two-and-a-half days of the event.

Over 500 conference delegates are expected, among them some 220 cruise line executives representing all the major and medium sized brands active in the region.

This year’s highlights include a Supplier Workshop with 120 suppliers meeting with chief buyers of leading cruise shipyards Fincantieri, Meyer Werft and STX France, and the much-anticipated presentation of the Seatrade Insider Cruise Awards 2011.

‘The conditions for Seatrade Europe could hardly be better,’ said Bernd Aufderheide, Chairman of the Management Board of Hamburg Messe und Congress GmbH, speaking on the occasion of the opening press conference this morning. ‘No other sector of the travel industry shows such marked growth as cruise tourism.’ Over the past four years the number of European cruise passengers has risen by a double-figure percentage every year. Last year 5.5 million Europeans booked a cruise.

Chris Hayman, Seatrade’s Chairman, agreed that, ‘We are in the right place at the right time. Europe is growing in all sectors – either in terms of passenger numbers, based on turnover or as a destination.’ 30% of cruise passengers worldwide now come from Europe. In keeping with these developments, cruise lines are pressing ahead with the construction of new ships. ‘Currently the shipyards have 18 new cruise ships on the order books, with a joint value of 12.8 billion US dollars,’ added Hayman.

In Europe too there is a trend towards bigger ships. ‘But niche products are also going to benefit from this,’ Richard J. Vogel, Chief Executive Officer of TUI Cruises GmbH, is firmly convinced. As a result of the differentiation of the ships, schemes and destinations, the additional capacity should result in a more varied range of services becoming available to a wide sector of the population. The TUI manager sees the German market as having particularly high potential. In spite of rising passenger numbers, so far only 1.5 % of Germans have taken a cruise. In the US, the market where cruises are most popular, market penetration is more like 3%.

But when it comes to river cruise, Germany is market leader. ‘430,000 Germans took a river cruise in 2010,’ stated Helge H. Grammerstorf, Managing Director of SeaConsult HAM GmbH and Vice-President of IG RiverCruise, the syndicate of the leading European river cruise companies. With 190 ships, the organisation accounts for around 80% of the global market. And in this sector too, all the signs point to growth. Currently there are 25 new river cruise ships, with a total capacity of 4300 beds, on order for delivery by 2014. This amounts to a growth in capacity of 14%. These ships are already being financed, by as much as 25%, from public funds, an approach that has come to be common practice for commercial shipping but is still quite new in the cruise industry. The second day of conference at Seatrade Europe will include a session dedicated to the financing of ocean-going and river cruisers.

Seatrade Europe is open to trade visitors on 27 and 28 September from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm, on 29 September from 10.00 am to 2.00 pm. Full information on the event can be found online at www.seatrade-europe.com.

Seatrade Europe 2011 is sponsored by Cruise Baltic, Cruise Gateway North Sea (funded by the Interreg IVB North Sea Region Programme), Deerberg-Systems GmbH, Ecolab Deutschland GmbH, Fidelio Cruise Software GmbH, Hobart GmbH, Passenger Port of St. Petersburg “Marine Façade” and SeaConsult HAM GmbH and supported by the Association of Cruise Experts (ACE), Cruise Europe, the European Cruise Council (ECC), IG RiverCruise, the Passenger Shipping Association (PSA) and Verband Deutscher Schiffsausrüster.

The event is organised by Hamburg Messe und Congress GmbH and Seatrade Communcations Ltd.

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Source: Seatrade-Europe, September 27, 2011.