Chinese multinational Cosco is expected to intensify efforts to transform the port of Piraeus into the pre-eminent cruise ship homeport and hub in the eastern Mediterranean, months after the Shanghai-based shipping giant assumed the management of the Piraeus Port Authority (OLP).
By A. Tsimplakis
[email protected]
Chinese multinational Cosco is expected to intensify efforts to transform the port of Piraeus into the pre-eminent cruise ship homeport and hub in the eastern Mediterranean, months after the Shanghai-based shipping giant assumed the management of the Piraeus Port Authority (OLP).
Cosco’s executives had promised as much prior to the Chinese state-affiliated company’s assumption of OLP, with strategic planning now eyeing cruise ship facilities and services in other top Greek holiday destinations.
According to reports, OLP’s management calculates that the overall cruise ship sector in Greece cannot substantially grow only via the major upgrading of Piraeus, given the high-end specifications required by cruise operators at every port of call and the facilities that upscale Chinese tourists -- which Cosco wants to attract for cruise holidays to the Greek isle -- usually expect.
Representatives of cruise ship operators, speaking on the sidelines of the 4th Posidonia Sea Tourim Forum, emphasized that the ongoing instability in other holiday destinations in the eastern Mediterranean offer Greece a unique opportunity to acquire and hold a major stake in the cruise ship sector.
To achieve better results, however, industry officials pointed to several steps that are necessary, such as promoting new island destinations through marketing campaigns; better organization of current ports, such as establishing the birth allocation procedure, and sinking capital into infrastructure improvement, as most Greek island harbors cannot host even one docked “mega” cruise ship.
One drawback, according to sector officials, is the fact that most of Greece’s lesser ports and harbors are still managed by state-run or locally administered “port funds”, which lack basic know-how in cruise ship management and are usually under-staffed.
On the sidelines of the recent Posidonia Sea Tourim Forum, the Cosco side was reportedly approaching officials managing the ports of Mykonos, Santorini, Katakolo, Hania, Rhodes and others in a bid to coordinate their activities in the cruise ship sector.
Discussions under way reportedly aim to find a legal formula to allow the establishment of cooperatives between OLP and regional port funds in order to provide a corporate structure for such partnerships, with Cosco dangling financing for infrastructure as an incentive.
Based on repeated statements by Cosco’s top management, the long-term target is for three million cruise ship passengers to pass through the port of Piraeus on a yearly basis, up from the current one million.