Venice Terminal Passeggeri inaugurated its Isonzo II cruise terminal today and anticipated further increases in vessel calls and passenger throughput in the year ahead.
The new two-storey building includes a restaurant, duty-free store, VIP areas and a viewing terrace, and comes complete with air conditioning and under-floor heating. It was 18 months in the construction and cost €12m.
Trevisanato said the steady increase in business at the terminal provided vindication of its expansion policy, adding that ‘Venice has become a cruise hub of the first order, and the source of itineraries that touch upon the most fascinating area of the Mediterranean, linking Italy, Croatia, Greece and Turkey.’
He attributed this success to the careful cultivation of the major cruise lines and VTP’s ability to home in on new cruise trends, such as winter cruising, which saw 60,000 passengers pass through the facility between November and March, and the increasingly popular short cruises.
Trevisanato added that cruising also had a major beneficial impact on the local economy, with recent studies finding that each cruise tourist spends €180 in the area, for a total of almost €300m per year.
VTP has invested more than €32m in the facility thus far and plans to invest €30m more over the next three years, part of that to convert warehouses into new terminal buildings and access new berth line.
‘It’s amazing to think that this functional and aesthetic transformation, from a commercial port into a tourist port, began just a decade ago and has had such speedy results,’ Trevisanato said.
Not everyone in Venice is quite so pleased with the expansion of cruising, however.
A growing network of citizens’ groups, linked through the Internet and social media, is fighting the industry hard in a bid at the very least to force the cruise ships out to a greater distance from the city’s fragile ecosystem.
In a joint statement, headlined ‘Get the big ships out of St Mark’s Basin’ issued to coincide with the today’s inauguration, they argue that the cruise ships, which tower over the low-rise wonder that is the Venetian cityscape, pass too close to the city, releasing dangerous air and noise emissions, and churning up the water, to the detriment of Venice’s fragile foundations.
They add that, as mayor of Venice, Paolo Costa recognized the need to push the cruise ships away from the city and argued for it. These days, as president of the port authority, his view is different. He argues that the construction of a new ferry terminal by 2012 will divert 400 ferries a year away from St. Mark’s Basin.
With them, he says, will go the principal cause of the disruption. The citizens’ groups, who know all about the difference between the timing of projects in official documents and the time it actually takes to complete them in Italy, will believe it when they see it.
