MSC Cruises’ newest cruise ship, MSC Bellissima, made her inaugural call in Spain when the vessel stopped in Valencia on Monday.
On the inaugural port call in the port of Valencia, Aurelio Martínez, president of the Port Authority of Valencia (PAV), delivered a commemorative plaque to the captain of MSC Bellissima, Raffaele Pontecorvo.
The event was also attended by the president of MSC Cruises in Spain, Emiliano González and invited personalities such as Francisco Romeu, Grupo Romeu or Jaime Matas, deputy general director of Banco Sabadell, among others.
During the event, Aurelio Martínez thanked the company for its commitment to Valencia and underlined “the pride that supposes for all Valencians to have the port call of a cruise of these characteristics, one of the largest in the world.”
For his part, the president of MSC Spain, Emiliano González, thanked the reception that MSC Bellissima has had on its first stop in a Spanish port after its inauguration on March 2. He also stressed that the vessel Bellissima, twin of MSC Meraviglia, is part of a cruise prototype that is expected to build five units, of which two of them are under construction, MSC Grandiosa and MSC Virtuosa, and will be delivered in November 2019 and in the spring of 2020; respectively.
In addition, the president of MSC Spain has anticipated that in the coming years the cruise company will make an investment of 13,600 million euros to move from a fleet of 16 ships to a fleet of 29 in the year 2027. For those dates, Emiliano González, has underlined that the company plans to “reach five million passengers.”
The port of Valencia has scheduled 199 port calls in 2019 and plans to exceed 435,000 passengers. MSC Cruises contributes to this figure, which in 2019 will be used as the base port for its ship MSC Divina.
In addition, the port of Valencia works with around 30 different shipping companies, including companies such as Costa Cruises, Royal Caribbean, Aida Cruises, TUI Group, Azamara Cruises or Viking Cruises, among others.
The offer of excursions in Valencia is wide, varied, comfortable and, above all, safe. In 2017, new routes were added to the traditional routes through the Albufera, the historic center or the City of Arts and Sciences. These include the Religious Art Route, which includes a stop at the Cathedral with the obligatory visit to the Holy Chalice and other churches such as the recently restored San Nicolás, rightly called the Spanish Sistine Chapel; the Silk Road that allows to know the historical legacy of this industry in Valencia with the visits to the Lonja de la Seda, the recently restored Silk Museum and the Velluters neighborhood in which the fabrics were made, even today used at parties popular as the Fallas.
