Two of the highlights are going to be the visit of the British liners the Queen Victoria and the Ventura, butthe largest ship in port will be the Costa Diadema, which is the largest of the Costa fleet with 3,2000 passengers on board.
Mein Schiff 5 will carrying 2,790 passengers, Thomson Majesty, 1970, 2,014 passengers will be on board the luxury Queen Victoria and a further 3,192 on board the Ventura.
The MSC Orchestra has a capacity for 3.200 passengers.
So in total, 16, 749 cruise passengers are expected in Palma today testing the city’s infrastructure and services.
Over the rest of the week, a total of 12 cruise liners are going to be docking in Palma bringing nearly 30,000 more cruise passengers into the city, so come the end of this week, Palma will have handled the best part of 50,000 cruise passengers, not to mention the thousands of crew members, keeping the debate of city saturation alive.
So far this year, there has been a slight down turn in the number of cruise ships, quite possibly because of the new six-ship cap placed on the Port of Palma.
However, construction work is underway, expanding the port so that it will be able to cope with the new lines of super cruise ships which carry 5,000-plus passengers.
How many of this week’s cruise visitors will come ashore remains to be seen, but even if they do, many are on all inclusive packages, so the question has to be asked and honestly answered how much do they bring to the high street?
