Cyprus wants more cruise ships serviced at port of Limassol

Cypriot Transport Minister Yiannis Karousos said more cruise ships will be serviced daily at the important port of Limassol after the operator there, DP World Limassol, said it would set aside the limit of two a day.

That came after a complaint, said the newspaper Phileleftheros, from with the company saying it would serve more than two cruise ships in a given day following complaints from Hull Blyth Araouzos which said the port operator wouldn’t service one of its ships in November 2021.

The minister, a former mayor of the resort town of Ayia Napa, reportedly sought a meeting with DP, said Kathimerini Cyprus.

DP World Limassol reportedly had refused other cruise ships in the past, citing the two-ship-per-day policy was in place to ensure high quality and a pleasant experience for travelers and as the company said it had brought in a 40 percent increase in cruise ships in 2019.

“We are particularly excited for the number of cruise arrivals we had at the port in November, since it marked a great success, not only for DP World Limassol but for cruise tourism in general,” said Lazaros Charalambous, Commercial Manager of DP World Limassol.

He said those figures proved that DP World was a step closer to making Limassol port “a major cruise hub in the Mediterranean,” but the Cypriot government also wants to bring back a ferry link with Greece which ran from the 1960s for 40 years before becoming unprofitable then.

Shipping Deputy Minister Natasa Pilides said officials had been working around to submit a study to the European Commission in support of the project, which could get as much as 6 million euros ($6.65 million.)

In April 2016 DP World Limassol was awarded a 25-year concession to exclusively operate the multi-purpose and Cruise terminal in Limassol that began in 2017 and the company said in December 2019 that more than 34,000 passengers landed on the island the previous month.