Costa Cruises names Tarragona as its second home port in Catalonia

Costa Cruises, a market leader in the cruise sector, announced yesterday that for the first time Tarragona will serve as home port for one of its Mediterranean itineraries in 2017. Tarragona will join Barcelona as the second Catalan city where the company has a permanent base. A ship belonging to the Italian cruise company will complete 17 return voyages originating in Tarragona between 2 June and 22 September. The cruise will depart from Tarragona and make stopovers in Savona (near Genoa), Porto Torres (north of Sardinia), Menorca, Ibiza-Formentera and Palma, before sailing back to Tarragona. The line will attract 25,000 passengers to the city, who will spend 2.2 million euros locally, according to the company’s forecasts. Aside from the impact on the city’s retail fabric, the Tarragona region will benefit from an increase in the number of visits to tourist attractions such as the Poblet monastery and the area’s other attractions, which will spread out the benefits of this type of tourism.

Offering Tarragona as a destination for cruise ships is a move aimed at European markets, the Italian market in particular. Port Aventura theme park’s new complex —due to open on 7 April— will be a big draw for Italian tourists. Costa Cruises passengers will be able to buy packs that include tickets to the theme park on the Costa Dorada. Raffaele D’Ambrosio, Costa Cruises’ General Manager for Spain and Portugal declared yesterday that "we will attract new markets, and this is a great business opportunity, but it is also really important we tell the whole of Europe about Tarragona".

With this latest announcement, the Port of Tarragona will handle around 40,000 cruise ship passengers and 40 vessels this year, far removed from the 2,000 passengers and three ships they handled five years ago. Such exponential growth comes as a result of the city’s new promotional strategy in the sector, begun in 2013. It created a new brand (Tarragona Cruise Port Costa Dorada) and a strategy to distinguish itself from Barcelona and other Mediterranean ports, based on the attractions the area has to offer, such as its Roman heritage and the wines from the Priorat region.