Minister of the Sea Ana Paula Vitorino has gone on air today to announce that Portugal will be hosting the largest conference for cruiseship operators in the world.
Called Seatrade Cruise Med – and concentrating on “the Mediterranean and its adjoining seas” – it will be coming to Lisbon in September, 2018.
Portugal made its bid for the biennial conference last year, Vitorino, clearly delighted by the coup, told TSF radio.
The congress “will help the growth of passenger traffic to the Port of Lisbon even more”, she said, stressing that traffic growth has been “very strong” even so during the last few years.
The opening in May of a new terminal in Santa Apólonia will reinforce Lisbon’s attraction for cruiseships, she added – stressing nonetheless that the government’s strategy for the port of Lisbon port is based on four areas, only one of which involves cruiseship business.
The rest “aim at greater efficiency, innovation and return of part of the riverside area to citizens”, adds TSF.
Meantime, the project for a container terminal at Barreiro is still on the cards – although slightly modified from blueprints presented by the last PSD-led government – and there are plans to improve navigability of the Tejo so that it can be used by barges all the way to the ports platform of Castanheira do Ribatejo (north of Lisbon).
