AIDAbella pays first visit to Kiel’s Ostseekai

**Ally** · 04-18-2008, 11:58 AM

Quote:

Kiel’s 2008 cruise season opened yesterday with the arrival of AIDAbella at Ostseekai. The port’s md Dr Dirk Claus later presented the traditional maiden docking gift to Captain Josef Husmann on board AIDA’s latest ship. AIDAbella will be officially named in Warnemunde next Wednesday.

In preparation for this year’s calls Kiel has overhauled the hydraulic gangways whilst inside the terminal a new lounge has been constructed. A new electronic traffic control system has started operating in the approach channel to the cruise terminal.

This year, about 190,000 passengers are expected to board or disembark at Kiel’s three passenger terminals representing a 10% increase on last year. ‘The demands on the Ostseekai are constantly increasing’, said Claus where MSC, Costa, AIDA and Hapag-Lloyd are existing customers. Along with its function as a base port, Kiel is also becoming increasingly significant as transit call. Both Crystal Cruises and Holland America Line have added Kiel to their ports-of-call from 2009.

Over the past three years, and with the support of the federal state of Schleswig Holstein, over €35m has been invested in the expansion of terminal facilities on the Ostseekai and Norwegenkai. A further €16m is to be invested in a new combined ferry and cruise terminal on the Schwedenkai ready in 2009.

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