From the end of May until October, the line’s four ships were due to operate Baltic Sea sailings which include St Petersburg – MSC Preziosa, MSC Grandiosa, MSC Poesia and MSC Virtuosa – will all suspend their calls to the city.
No MSC ships are currently calling at St Petersburg.
MSC said the health and safety of its passengers and crew was “a top priority” and that “since the onset” of the conflict in Ukraine, it had been in touch with alternative ports – such as Stockholm, Helsinki and Tallinn – to confirm new calls.
Carnival Corp brands P&O Cruises and Cunard amended their Baltic cruise itineraries in response to the escalating conflict, while other cruise lines and operators said they were “monitoring the situation closely”.
MSC said it would communicate the details of changes on each individual sailing to travel agents and customers “as soon as possible”.
MSC’s website will also be updated to reflect the confirmed details of new itineraries to “provide maximum clarity” for existing guests and future guests looking to book Baltic Sea sailings.
MSC Group’s cruise division has announced that it had become the first major global cruise company to join the Green Marine Europe Label.
According to a press release, Green Marine Europe Label is a voluntary environmental certification program for the maritime industry that was launched in 2020 to “create a mechanism to support shipowners in demonstrating their environmental performance on a European scale.” It follows the success of Green Marine’s North American environmental certification program, MSC said.
MSC Group said that it has pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and its two brands, MSC Cruises and Explora Journeys, are “committed to measuring their environmental performance annually.”
The cruise brands are using the Green Marine Europe Label’s program guidelines to track progress across eight key performance indicators: aquatic invasive species, pollutant air emissions – sulfur oxides and particulate matter -, pollutant air emissions – nitrogen oxides -, greenhouse gas emissions, oily discharge, waste management, underwater noise and responsible ship recycling.
The two brands have committed to submit their annual environmental performance results to an external accredited verification party and publish them.
“Even while we tackled the many challenges of the past two years, we never lost sight of our responsibilities in the long term. In line with our commitment to sustainability and our pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, the Green Marine Europe Label will help us demonstrate our progress and share this with our guests, the communities that we serve and all other stakeholders. All of this, while we continue our work on several projects studying the development of green fuels and technology solutions and we look forward to bringing them to life soonest,” Executive Chairman of the Cruise Division of MSC Group, Pierfrancesco Vago, said.
‘’Certification to the Green Marine Europe Label across our entire fleet will further demonstrate our commitment to environmental sustainability as it also reflects our desire to continually improve our performance in that space,” MSC Cruise Management’s Vice President Environmental Operations and Compliance Minas Myrtidis added.
According to the press release, the Green Marine Europe Label is the result of a partnership of the North American environmental certification program Green Marine, which has been operational for 10 years, and the Surfrider Foundation, a leading NGO in the ocean and maritime protection in the European Union.
The partnership was established in 2019, and the program was launched in the spring of 2020.
MSC said that in recent years it has made considerable advances across all areas of its cruise operations thanks to the deployment of some art environmental technologies, fuels and solutions. These include advanced emissions control systems, ballast water treatment systems and advanced wastewater treatment systems.
The first two vessels of Explora Journeys, which are currently under construction, will feature these and other environmental solutions.
Preziosa will arrive in early October offering itineraries visiting five European cities, with its 2022/23 winter season due to run through to April 2023.
Sales will open in the coming days, said MSC. Preziosa will replace MSC Virtuosa, which will sail in summer 2022 from Southampton.
Virtuosa’s season will get underway with a Guernsey mini-cruise departing 29 April and will wrap up with a final Mediterranean sailing scheduled to depart on 4 November.
MSC managing director the UK and Ireland, Antonio Paradiso, said Preziosa’s deployment from Southampton underlined MSC’s commitment to the UK market and travel trade.
“We are proud that we are providing agents with such a variety of products to sell in the ex-UK space this year,” said Paradiso. “Sailing MSC Virtuosa from Southampton last year allowed us a great opportunity to access the new-to-cruise market, which made up 50% of our sales for summer 2021.”
Preziosa will offer a seven-night winter itinerary featuring five European city destinations, with calls in Hamburg, Zeebrugge (for Bruges and Brussels), Rotterdam (for Amsterdam) and Le Havre (for Paris).
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