The Mediterranean Shipping Cruises’ liner MSC Musica was a majestic sight in Grand Harbour yesterday, when it made its maiden call at Malta.
MSC Cruises, the largest independent Italian cruise line, operating from Naples, started its commercial cruise activities with three ships: the MSC Rhapsody, MSC Monteroy and MSC Symphony. In 1997 the cruise line bought its fourth ship, the MSC Melody. In 2000 it sold the MSC Symphony and at the same time ordered the construction of the MSC Lirica and MSC Opera, both with a maximum capacity of 2,200 passengers.
Today MSC Cruises operates seven classic ships, offering a wide range of cruises with interesting itineraries and excellent on board services.
Tourism and Culture Minister Francis Zammit Dimech, who was present for the MSC Musica maiden call, said the cruise liner industry in the past three years had grown by 63 per cent. He recalled that in 2005, 313,611 passengers visited Malta aboard cruise liners, going up to 394,567 last year. In the first nine months this year, 367,705 cruise passengers have already visited Malta.
“If we look at some figures released recently we find that cruise operations in Europe are on the increase and that cruise lining is a thriving industry. At the end of 2005, 36 cruise lines were domiciled in Europe, operating a fleet of 100 cruise ships with a capacity of almost 86,000 lower berths. Nearly 3.3 million European residents booked cruises, representing 23 per cent of all cruise passengers worldwide. More than 2.8 million passengers embarked on their cruises from European ports with the vast majority of these cruises visiting ports in the Mediterranean, the Baltic and other European regions, generating 13.1 million passenger visits to European port cities.
“The economic impact includes EUR8.3 billion (Lm3.56 billion) in direct spending, EUR19.1 billion (Lm8.20 billion) in total output, EUR6.0 billion (Lm2.58 billion) in employee compensation and 187,252 jobs,” Dr Zammit Dimech said.
Against this very encouraging background, the government in Malta not only encouraged this sector through the construction of the Cruise Liner Passenger Terminal, but has plans for cruise liner berthing facilities in Senglea and Gozo. He said it was important to increase cruise liner berths “as we are at times confronted with a greater number of cruise liners visiting Malta, than we can actually berth”. He said that last year’s record of seven cruise liners in Grand Harbour on the same day, was this year broken when on October 5, eight cruise liners visited Malta on the same day.
The industry was a success story. He said the cruise liner industry was contributing about EUR93 million a year to Malta’s economy, and there was the added advantage that cruise passengers promoted Malta, since over 80 per cent of all passengers interviewed said that they were interested in returning to Malta in the future.
Dr Zammit Dimech said that MSC Cruises was one of the pioneers in the cruise liner industry in Malta. He congratulated Norman Hamilton who was the brains behind the MSC’s presence in Malta.