Press Conference for Opening of Passenger Navigation 2019
25 April 2019
Today, April 25, a press conference dedicated to the opening of the navigation season 2019 in the Passenger Port of St. Petersburg was held in the ITAR-TASS press center. V. A. Kashirin, the CEO of the Passenger Port of St. Petersburg, and A. E. Panfilov, the CFO, answered journalists’ questions. In the report presented at the press conference, representatives of the Port told about the formed schedule of vessel calls for 2019, according to which the growth of passenger traffic to 625 thousand passengers is projected.
At the same time, the number of vessel calls in accordance with the schedule will slightly decrease, which is explained by the global trends of increasing the vessel dimensions.
At the press conference, a new procedure of time slots operation during peak days was also indicated. The main innovation is that the timeslot system in the organization of passenger handling will this year apply to all vessel calls during the first day of stay of vessels in the Port of St. Petersburg. Let us remind you that due to the possibility of a 72-hour visa-free regime application, the time of cruise ships harboring may vary from 1 to 3 days.
In the speech, long-term development plans, work on which will continue this season, were outlined. One of the large-scale projects includes the creation of a single cruise-ferry operator of sea terminals. The first step towards the project implementation was the transfer of the Marine Station (1, Morskoy Slavy Sq.) property to PP SPb MF, PLC for trust management in December 2018, while navigation opened with the entry of Princess Anastasia ferry belonging to MOBY SPL on March 23 this year. In the future, it is planned to transfer landing stages on the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment and the English Embankment to PP SPb MF, PLC for management.
The active implementation phase includes a project for reconstruction of the marine permanent multilateral Russian Federation State border checkpoint, which will lead to the creation of conditions for the regular passenger ferry services in the Passenger Port of St. Petersburg. Information about the project is available
through the link.
Summing up, the representatives of the Port stressed that the Port is fully ready for the opening of navigation 2019, which will be held on April 28 with the call of the Poesia vessel belonging to MSC Cruises, an Italian company. The Port has taken all measures necessary to ensure the safety of the facility and passengers arriving on cruise ships in 2019, and the infrastructure meets all international standards and requirements of the Russian legislation in the field of transport security.
