April and October are the two months highlighted by cruise companies as the most popular for travel in the Mediterranean. As such, Cartagena concentrates the highest volume of tourists arriving on board such boats in spring and autumn. As such, in just two weeks, a total of eighteen cruise ships will arrive at the Juan Sebastián de ElCano dock, bringing into the region 16,000 tourists who will all enjoy the delights of what the city has to offer.
From this coming Wednesday until Tuesday, April 30, arrivals are almost daily. With the exception of just four days, one or two ships will be docked at the same time in city waters.
On Sunday, April 21, there will be a double stopover, with a ship carrying 5,200 passengers, the Sun Princess, and a smaller ship with just 100 passengers (Emeral Azzurra). The result will see about 5,500 tourists through the city centre, with a welcome economic boost for shops and hospitality businesses.
The Sun Princess is a most spectacular ship and the largest of its category built so far in Italy, as well as the first powered by liquefied natural gas to come from it’s Italian factory. The LNG tanks have a capacity of 4,000 cubic meters, which allows cruising of almost nine continuous days consuming exclusively this type of fuel.
Before that, on Wednesday, everything is prepared for the arrival of Oosterdam, with about 2,500 tourists. On Friday the Wind Surf, a regular in Cartagena in recent yearswill arrive with it’s 300 cruise passengers.
The weekend will see a double stopover with the Azamara Quest (700 passengers) and the Carnival Glory (2,000 tourists), while on Sunday, the Sun Princess will dock. For these four days the forecast is the not inconsiderable figure of 10,700 passengers, practically 2,500 each day.
In the following week the figure decreases in terms of the number of people, but not in ships, since there are nine that plan to dock, although of a much smaller size: between one hundred, on the Emerald Sakara and five hundred on the Seabourn Quest. In total, the forecast is for about 2,800 people, while for the last three days of the month, April 29 and 30 more specifically, the month will culminate with three boats and 2,400 passengers.
