Floating resorts miss out Klaipeda Seaport as rivalry with the Black Sea region sharpens

KLAIPEDA - With big hopes to make Klaipeda one of the main cruise ship hubs in the Baltics, it is just not meant to happen. To the dismay of many city development planners, the port of Klaipeda has berthed half the number of cruise ships this year than it did 3 or 4 years ago. To be exact, there were 37 ocean liners carrying around 21,500 vacationers this cruise ship season, against 45 cruise ships with over 35,200 passengers last year. The strong likelihood is that even fewer cruise ships will moor at the Lithuanian seaport next year, as only 22 ocean liners have so far expressed their will to do so. Why do cruise ships, which seemingly turn head over heels in accommodating the picky Westerner, avoid Klaipeda?

According to Kristina Gontier, marketing department head at the Klaipeda State Seaport Authority, the dwindling number of cruise ship visits pertains to foreign travel agencies’ fading interest in Klaipeda as a tourism destination, due to lack of tourism services here – a shortage of places of interest, as well as a lack of variety of amusement and excursions.
The cruise ship “Empress” of Pullmantur Cruises, which swung by Klaipeda three seasons in a row and nine times this summer alone, and which will replace Klaipeda with the German town of Varnemunde next season, embodies the deteriorating plight in Klaipeda cruise ship piers. “The latter’s loss of the cruise ship is particularly painful for all of us. The small German town of Varnemunde lags behind Klaipeda in many senses; however, it has one huge advantage – a fast train allowing quick and cozy access to Berlin. If we had a bullet train from Klaipeda to Vilnius, we would definitely lure into Klaipeda not only the Empress,” Romena Savickiene, director of Klaipeda’s Tourism and Culture Information Center (KTCIC), said to The Baltic Times.

Some tourism agencies and cruise ship agents point to the high levies set by the Klaipeda State Seaport Authority which, according to them, should be slashed in order to attract more ocean liners to Klaipeda.
However, Klaipeda has axed the port entrance levies several times this year, the last time it did so was last spring, reducing them by 20 percent for a second and a third entrance. Disappointingly, it has not worked.
The levy slashes have put Klaipeda on par with Riga Seaport, but still far behind Tallinn, which embraced 416 cruise ships this year.

“We cannot stand up against Tallinn, which is a capital city and which is close to St. Petersburg, which attracts the largest number of cruise ships in this part of the Baltic Sea. With 400 cruise ships sailing into Tallinn annually, the Estonian capital can allow itself to slash the port levies drastically and earn more from the larger quantity of cruise ships. We cannot compete in that facet with Tallinn,” says Arturas Drungilas, marketing and administration director at the Klaipeda State Seaport Authority.

With the seaport entrance levies reduced by a few times, picky foreign tourism agencies and ship agents still point to them being too high and demand significant discounts for the ships that moor at Klaipeda Seaport.
Do only the economic incentives matter in attracting more floating resort towns into Klaipeda? No, they alone do not suffice, some tourism experts assert. A recent survey of cruise ship passengers showed that, while the majority of foreign seafarers enjoyed their stay in Klaipeda, a good deal of them were astounded by the disorderly territory at the pier that has to be crossed in order to reach the old city of Klaipeda.

The KTCIC director, however, disagrees that Klaipeda is rapidly losing its attraction to cruise lines and foreign travel agencies. “The business is known for its ups and downs, therefore, the surges and falls in the number of cruise ships is a part of the fluctuation,” says Savickiene. She added: “With the crisis still here, many cruise lines still cope with its aftermath, often reshuffling their itineraries, dry-docking some ships and getting rid of other ones. Those seaports with over 100 cruise ships annually do not consider a loss of 10 or 15 cruise ships a year to be a big deal. However, for Klaipeda hosting 37 cruise ships this year, the loss of over a dozen of the ships does strike painfully,” the KTCIC director emphasized.

And yet, there is another reason for the cruise ships’ withdrawal from Klaipeda Seaport that many Klaipeda tourism big shots tend to dismiss. Until now, Klaipeda Seaport, with the exception of a Costa Cruise ship and a Seaborn yacht, was mostly frequented by old second-hand cruise ships belonging to little known and often financially struggling cruise lines. When the crisis hit, they were the first to collapse - Happy Cruises and Dolphin Cruise Line, to name two of them. Simply speaking, Klaipeda has ended up in the second importance list of seaports for many leading world cruise lines. In truth, far from the VIP list.

With Klaipeda unable to rival in an abundance of places of interest and amusement of more developed German and Scandinavian ports, as well as Riga, Tallinn and, furthermore, Saint Petersburg, cruise operators started crossing Klaipeda off from their Baltic cruise itineraries.
In the recent decade, the major cruise operators, including Costa Cruises and Celebrity Cruises, have tried out Klaipeda Seaport. What Klaipeda has the most interesting of on the coastline can be seen and experienced in one day, while other neighboring seaports, cruise experts maintain, have considerably improved their infrastructure, offering new places of interest. Klaipeda has effectively stuck with two tourist destinations – Nida dunes and Palanga. It seems this is not enough anymore to attract money-savvy and fussy Westerners to Klaipeda.

“The attraction of the Soviet-type cultural heritage has faded away. So did, to a degree, the traditional spots of Palanga and Nida,” argues Tomas Petrauskas, a tourism expert. “We have noticed that many Spanish voyagers miss the more hustle and bustle in both Klaipeda and Palanga. These kinds of frolic-time oriented passengers usually come to Klaipeda by large 2,500-and-something [passenger] cruise ships. They usually do not buy shore excursions. However, those who come by smaller ships, carrying onboard up to 1,000 passengers, tend to be happy with their stay in Klaipeda, Nida and Palanga. As a rule, 90 percent of these kinds of passengers buy excursions,” Savickiene asserted to The Baltic Times.

With the bankruptcy wave of cruise ship operators in the Baltics, the rest seemingly are turning to the more economically stable and often more culturally rich Black Sea. With the cruise ship or line acquisitions, new owners change not only the name of the ship, but often switch to another region - the Mediterranean or the Black Sea, let alone the Caribbean.
Compared to the choppy Baltic waters, the Black Sea offers balmy and sunny weather conditions throughout the year – an advantage the region’s countries try to use.
Thus, this year, with the cruise ship season stretching to the beginning of November, the Odessa Seaport has alone already garnered over 100,000 cruise ship passengers, a 27 percent hike from 2009.

In the annual world tourism fair “Seatrade Europe 2011” in Hamburg this year, cruise ship operators flirted with the region, predicting a further rise of worldwide known ocean liners in it. Some cruise operators explain the sympathy of the Black Sea simply as: the Baltic region’s cruise ship market has been crammed and passengers become weary of the same sea routes.
The KTCIC director, who attended the Hamburg fair, does not write off the Baltic Sea and Klaipeda just yet.

“Most cruise line experts have agreed upon continuation of the shaky cruise market until 2015. Lithuania has to do a lot of homework before it stabilizes by then. I would say our only cruise ship port needs help from all Lithuania, and even more. Thus, for example, our diplomats and commerce representatives in the United States, which traditionally holds very strong positions in the cruise market, have to do a lot more in introducing our Klaipeda Seaport to potential American cruise ship passengers. Regrettably, some of them still have not heard of Lithuania, let alone Klaipeda. If Americans flock into local travel agencies seeking more information about the Baltics, it means the largest cruise ship operators will follow them, deploying their ships in the Baltic Sea. Obviously, attracting more cruise ships to Klaipeda is very complex work, and we have to do much homework yet,” Savickiene asserted.