What does it happen to cruise liners and to Venice?

Who will really chose the occupational and landscape fortunes in Venice

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What does it happen to cruise liners and to Venice?

Who will really chose the occupational and landscape fortunes in Venice

What happens in Venice on the cruise front? And above all, what will happen?

The answers, no matter how absurd they seem, are to be found in something called 'Cruise Orderbook 2017-26'. This is the order of these particular vessels - real floating cities that work H24 with their magnetic fields, engines always on with fuels that are not always green, the millions of air conditioners, their thousand internal elevators and the consequent jaws of other plants, warehouses and kitchens, which are home to 5,000 people plus crews.

 

According to the orders, ships up to 96,000 tons will be condemned to disappear (while there is a small and unexpected revamp, which is based only on 5% of orders, relating to cruises up to 55,000 tons, those that define themselves luxury ones...)

Clear is the surge in the orders of sea monsters (+ 74% of orders on 92 new ships ordered) that are between 97,000 and over 200,000 tons.

However, Venice is a home port: cruise ships depart from here and arrive here. Only a small part of the 'wealth' enlivened by the port comes from cruises because Venice confirms to be above all a large commercial port.

What does it mean in terms of relapse for a city (considering that a week on the cruise can cost even 600 euros all inclusive ...)?

The latest survey in this sense is dated 2013, the day after the approval of the famous decree Clini / Passera (2012) that delimited the Venetian Lagoon by imposing only the passage of ships under 40,000 tons and was born on the wave of the serious accident at the Giglio Island (a paradise on the Tuscan coasts which is also a marine and water reserve) where a COSTA ship (named Concordia) gets too close to make a 'bow' and sinks pours on one side - the dead will be over three dozen and the environmental damage still incalculable.

After the decree was appealed to the TAR and obviously those who promoted the appeal (the cruise ships owners) won because the decree was not clearly written. Hence, the same owners of cruise ships have 'self-limited' by imposing to Venice 'only' 96,000 tons.

Although dated, there is a research which is still published in full on the site of the Venice Port Authority; we summarize here only the synthesis (the research is signed by Cesare Dosi, Ignazio Musu, Dino Rizzi, Michele Zanette): 'The development of the Venetian cruiser is essentially attributable to the growth in traffic relative to vessels of over 40,000 tons. In 2012, 93.6% of passengers arrived in the city on this type of ships. The demand for the purchase of goods and services, the main channel through which the cruiser influences the rest of the economic fabric, is estimated at 436 mln of euro, of which 283.6 (64.9%) for local goods and services.

Most of the expenditure on local goods and services comes from cruise passengers who embark or disembark in Venice, which is estimated to incur expenses for about 207 million. of euro, 72.9% of total local spending. The remaining part is divided between shipping companies, 16.4%, and crews, 10.6%. The importance of the cruise passengers' expense explains why 68% of all local spending is directed to the tourism services sector (hotels, restaurants), commerce and transport.

The analysis of sectoral interdependencies shows that the effect of "local" spending on national added value can be quantified at € 397 million, with a multiplier of 1.4 compared to direct expenditure, while the effect on local value added can be estimated. in 221.6 mln of Euro. The employment impact is estimated at 7,473 equivalent national work units, while it is about 4,255 equivalent work units in the Venetian area.

The local added value represents 3.26% of the GDP of the municipality of Venice and 0.96% of that of the province. Employment represents 4.1% of the total employed in the municipality of Venice and 1.19%, of those in the entire province.

In the extreme hypothesis in which the access in the lagoon was allowed only to vessels of less than 40 thousand tons (...) would be reduced by 90% compared to the values ​​recorded in 2012 and the expenditure for local goods and services would amount to around 40 mln. of euro (against the current 283.6 mln.). '

Now, if the market (as seen from the register of purchases) goes towards the direction of ever larger ships, it is obvious that Venice - due to its historical and landscape features and because it is a living city - can certainly not welcome them to Marittima and Santa Marta (the current stations for cruise ships in the port area which, depending on the tonnage of the ships, may have up to seven or eight at the same time).

There are other projects to moor the cruise liners under study, one is also signed by the Port Authority itself.

At this moment a very silly (but just apparent being in Italy) question is ‘What happens in the Lagoon with the MOSE’? 

It is a good thing to remember that both at the Bocca di Porto del Lido and at Malamocco and Chioggia - although it has never been used (the date of its operational start we are talking about now has slipped: from December 2018 to 2021), it has already changed the seabed in the sense of shortening the depths for housing large volumes of ‘volumes’ next to and underneath the bulkheads that are raised.

A cruise ship needs a draft of -9.75 (for example in Chioggia it is -9) so that at MOSE in operation some ships will not be able to enter or leave anymore.

It seems strange but the MOSE was built (by the Consorzio Venezia Nuova without any state bid yet with direct financing to a group of companies, with rising costs reaching the monstre of 6 billions euros of which 1 billion has been discovered is the amount of bribes paid to politicians) was built without ... ask the Port anything about the operation required for the bottoms of any ship. The last loud alarm sounded by a bunch of very different non-profi and parties - from WWF to Movimento 5Stelle, to Ambiente Venezia, to Sale Docks and so on - was dating back 2010, just before the allocation of the big cement bases of Mose on the bottom of the waters. Their unlistened voices were saying that it was that the sole and last moment to stop a very damaging public work which have been bringing among the evil dotes also the de-facto murdering of the Venetian port economy.

 

The Port advocates the construction of docks in Marghera, on the North side, digging about 1.5 / 1.8 MLN cubic meters of mud B (not the super toxic C) from the V. Emanuele Channel to bring it to -12, but that channel does not need be also enlarged. In 12 months, says Pino Musolino the actual president of the Port Authority (a quite good and rising 1978 Venetian born manager), two berths could also be ready. And they already have the 'lands' and the MIT Regulatory Plan (of the minister they depend on), on the contrary they seem to have long been able to repair a bank of a flood (which contains sludge C slowly pouring the lagoon) broken in Marghera but their request is still blocked.

There is a terminal ‘off’ option (outside the lagoon) still on the track, the Duferco-De Piccoli, which however has received many prescription pages in VIA (the Ambiental Validation) and is not (yet) considered a work of public interest . And options are also in Fusina, in other areas of Marghera that have had a lower valuation coefficient due to the high chemical risk of those areas. In addition to one in Cavallino Treporti which is absolutely opposed.

Sheltered at the time (and fortunately) are other projects such as the one that planned to dig a channel (Contorta) and to split an island in half: curious to find out that the date of filing of this project to the Ministry is one a few days before the Giglio incident which also provoked the ill-fated Clini / Passera decree which states to give alternatives to be built to allow the bigger cruise liners to still moor in Venice without passing from/to San Marco Basin.

It’s sure that the cruise liners generate lots of additional transports - i.e. maritime stress in canals and in the main areas - on al local basis (water taxi, big ship to disembark them in larger groups to be toured in the city) and really suffocate the daily quality of living because thousands of them block literally the small streets being groups of 100 people per time. And they generate lots of garbage anytime they unpack their doggy bags they take with them from the ships to the city (I doubt very much they go to buy something expensive or good in town: either in terms of food or in terms of gadget).

Why, perhaps others ask themselves, if a tourist sleeps in the hotel or in another tourist location pays the often hated tourist tax and a cruiser who sleeps in Venice in a giant of the sea no?

Many Municipalities, including Venice, have not yet had a 'landing fee' even though there is no more ‘island’ than Venice in Italy. Incompatible with the tourist tax (‘or one or the other’ the law says), one could easily be created in Venice for the scourge of tourism hit and run (and huge amounts of waste and damage is left behind). There are about 30 MLN tourists / year (when there are 8 cruise ships in port, only there we might have - by default - 42,000 / day if not more).

Many Italian islands have the landing tax and not the ‘council touristic’ tax and it is clear that in Venice the paying agents or the ratio materiae should be differentiated: for example the passengers of the cruise ships (who disembark in the case of the landing tax, or stay in case they sleep in Venice in Porto) but they should pay as the other tourists in town.

 

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