Tag Archives: Barcelona

P&O Cruises’ Britannia to host Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway

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P&O Cruises is to host a special episode of Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway live from the top deck of its flagship Britannia in Barcelona – and will launch a competition in the New Year for agents to be on board.

Throughout the next series of ITV’s award-winning show, 200 viewers of Saturday Night Takeaway will have the chance to win 100 free cabins on a 14-night cruise from Southampton to the Mediterranean and back, which will include an overnight call in Barcelona where the special episode will be filmed live on board.

The sailing will leave Southampton on March 27, 2016 and call at Cadiz, Barcelona, Civitavecchia (Rome), Ajaccio, Corsica and Gibraltar before returning to Southampton on April 10.

Top TV duo Ant and Dec will be joined for the special show by celebrity guests, and will stage all their usual stunts, performances and competitions in front of the winning viewers, regular passengers and those agents who win a place on board.

The competition for agents to join the sailing and be part of the show will be run exclusively in Travel Weekly in early 2016.

P&O Cruises senior vice president of sales & marketing Paul Ludlow said: “We are delighted that Britain’s most popular Saturday night show will be broadcasting live from Britain’s biggest and newest cruise ship.

“P&O Cruises is an inherently British brand and with Saturday night entertainment being such a popular British tradition, we thought this would be a great partnership. And there is nothing more iconic for great family fun than Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.

“This will be a spectacular event and our guests will be able to join in the fun on the evening as Ant and Dec present a memorable show from Britannia in Barcelona.”

Ludlow said the tie-up with Saturday Night Takeaway would really “open up the concept of cruise” to the masses and drive more new-to-cruise sales.

“Over the course of the series, we estimate that Saturday Night Takeaway, and the cruise giveaway and live show on board, will be seen by over 22 million people.

“They will get a glimpse of cruise and the product and it will start a conversation that people might not have had otherwise.

“We expect to see a return from so many million people seeing Britannia. We will be putting cruise into people’s conscious,” he said.

Ludlow said this was the first time P&O Cruises had entered into such a tie-up, but added: “People will have seen P&O as a brand really evolve over the last 18 months to two years.

“It really celebrates its Britishness and represents the best way for Brits to go off and do something quite adventurous but come back to somewhere that understands their tastes and that feels comfortable.”

Commenting on the opportunity for agents win a place on the sailing and the chance to be part of the live show and to meet Ant & Dec, Ludlow said:

“Inherently, most people are going to book a cruise through a travel agent and so we want to involve agents in this, so that they feel as excited as we are about it.

“We will run a competition exclusively in Travel Weekly for agents to win places – so watch this space in the New Year.”

Customers already booked on the 14-night sailing will be contacted and told about the live filming in Barcelona.

The impact on their cruise will be explained and they will be offered the chance to cancel with a full refund, or to carry on as normal. Ludlow said he “expected the majority to stick with us”.

Anyone interested in making a future booking on the sailing will be told what is happening on board before any money has changed hands.

Saturday Night Takeaway’s executive producer, Pete Ogden, said: “I am thrilled to be working with P&O Cruises to shoot a live episode of the series on board Britannia.

“It is a huge undertaking, but I am confident that we will work together to make it a spectacular event.”

Barcelona to Cruisers: We Love You. Now Please Get Back on Board

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Last weekend, a record-breaking 60,000 cruise ship passengers disembarked into the popular Spanish city. But despite generating investment and jobs, these staggering numbers are at odds with Barcelona mayor Ada Colau’s vow to cap the amount of tourists who inundate the city each year.

Last weekend, a staggering 60,000 tourists entered Barcelona by sea, shattering the city’s previous record. This is a number that the president of Barcelona Port, Sixte Cambra, wants to see increase. It was reported that last year cruise ship passengers alone spent about $900 million, creating an estimated 7,000 permanent jobs in the city. “The report shows that the cruise sector generates investment and jobs and is an activity that creates growth and stability,” says Cambra. This is why, despite the opposition from the mayor, Barcelona Port hopes to expand in order to accommodate even more of these ships.

However, not everyone is as excited about these numbers as Cambra is, specifically newly-elected mayor Ada Colau, who got attention during her campaign by proposing to impose a tourism cap on the city. Colau and many others feel that the city’s beaches, streets, and popular neighborhoods like the Gothic Quarter are at risk of being oversaturated by tourists, many of whom disgorge from the massive cruise ships that make Barcelona a popular port of call. “If we don’t want to end up like Venice, we will have to put some kind of limit in Barcelona,” she says. However, those benefiting from the surge in tourism (the city’s tourism numbers doubled in the last decade) do not share in Colau’s concerns and would like to see these numbers grow even more. One advantage of welcoming cruise passengers is that most are embarking in the city for a day before returning to their ships at night, meaning that the city’s already-packed hotels won’t have to take on any additional guests.

At a time when Europe’s economy is still struggling to get going, it’s hard to turn away easy money and jobs, but at what point does the impact on the local way of life become too much? This is a question that both sides of the argument in Europe’s third most-visited city will have to address as they try to find a manageable balance.

Carnival Corp. to build second cruise terminal in Barcelona

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Norwegian Jade in Barcelona.

Carnival Corp. has received approval to build and operate a second private cruise terminal in Barcelona, Europe’s busiest cruise port.

The cruise company said it will spend more than 30 million euros (about $33 million) on the project. Carnival said construction is slated to start in 2016 and that the facility could open as early as 2018.

The terminal, to be built at the port’s Adossat wharf, will be one of Europe’s largest at nearly 125,000 square feet, Carnival said.

There has been a “consistent surge in growth” in Barcelona over the past several years, said Giora Israel, Carnival Corp.’s senior vice president of global port and destination development. Barcelona is a destination and homeport for seven of Carnival Corp.’s 10 cruise brands.

Besides the terminal, Carnival Corp. will build and operate a new parking facility on the cruise pier.

The Port of Barcelona said it had 764 cruise calls in 2014.