Trabzon port welcomes first cruise ship this year

TRABZON

The province of Trabzon, on Türkiye’s Black Sea coast, has welcomed this year’s first cruise ship.

The 195-meters long “Astoria Grande” arrived at the city’s port with 505 Russians on board.

“For the first time a cruise ship docked at our port in the winter season,” said Muzaffer Ermiş, general manager of Trabzon Liman, noting that the ship first visited the port of Ünye before arriving at Trabzon.

The Astoria Grande navigates mostly in the Black Sea with Russian passengers on board but also sometimes visits Istanbul and the port of Çeşme on the Aegean Sea, according to Ermiş.

Until 2017, around 40 cruise ships would visit Trabzon each year, said Tamer Erdoğan, deputy director at the provincial directorate of culture and tourism

Cruise traffic stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic but resumed in 2022, he added.

Last year a total of eight cruise ships visited the Black Sea province with nearly 5,000 passengers.

In 2022, more than 1 million cruise passengers visited Türkiye, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Adil Karaismailoğlu said earlier this month.

Some 991 cruise ships docked at the country’s ports, up from only 78 cruise liners in 2021.

The number of cruise passengers increased 22 times in 2022 compared to the previous year, rising to over 1 million, Karaismailoğlu said.

The busiest month in terms of cruise tourism was October when a total of 155 ships with nearly 207,000 holidaymakers on board visited the Turkish ports.

The port in the popular holiday resort town of Kuşadası in the western province of Aydın took the lead among all destinations in Türkiye. Some 464 cruise ships and around 494,000 cruise passengers arrived in Kuşadası in 2022.

Sinop, another destination in the Black Sea, hosted 14 ships and 8,000 cruise passengers.