The cruise ship MSC Lirica with 1,941 guests and 735 crew members sailed into the Port of Bar yesterday. There were also 13 Montenegrin citizens on board who returned to their homeland.
On that occasion, a visit to the ship and a ceremonial exchange of plaques were organized. MSC Lirica representatives expressed their gratitude for such warm hospitality.
Our guests and crew are happy that they have the opportunity to explore a new city and a new port. We feel more than welcome. We hope that our future sailings will be exactly like this – said Igor Anić, Staff Captain.
The President of the Municipality of Bar, Dušan Raičević, also expressed his satisfaction with this important visit of the cruise ship and all its passengers to the town under Rumija.
Apart from the 200 ports in which MSC operates, the port of Bar managed to position itself and be on the map of that route. Unfortunately, the weather conditions are not such that guests can visit the attractions of our city, but I hope that next time they will have the opportunity to get to know all the sights of the city and realize that Bar is a port that can be included in the MSC map itself, as one of of the biggest cruise companies – said Raičević.
Thanks to the successful cooperation between the Municipality of Bar and the Allegra agency as MSC’s port agent for Montenegro, guests of the MSC cruise ship will have many opportunities to get to know Bar in its full glory in the coming period.
The plan for this year is that, apart from these first two sailings, we have more than 19 sailings of cruise ships that will bring close to 50,000 tourists to our city and thereby significantly contribute to the tourist traffic in our city. We can state that we are slowly but surely returning to the pre-Covid period when we started all activities in the organization of the cruise business – announced the President of the Municipality of Bar.
The director of the Allegra Montenegro agency, Mihailo Vukić, points out that such a large number of cruise ships sailing into the port of Bar is the final result of many years of effort and work of this maritime travel agency. It indicates that this is another sign of the recovery of cruise tourism after the pandemic.
Next month in Copenhagen we have the inauguration of the new MSC ship Euribia. Ships at full capacity visit all ports in the world, so it is a great expansion of the cruise industry and we are glad that Montenegro is included in that product and that the Montenegrin economy and Montenegrin tourism has a great profit and profit from this industry – pointed out Vukić .
Nikoleta Nikčević, director of the Bar Tourism Organization, agrees that cruising tourism is extremely important both for the municipality of Bar and for the whole of Montenegro.
I owe a lot of thanks to the agency Allegra and the Port of Adria that, in cooperation with the Municipality and our TO, managed to bring cruise tourism to Bar and to show the beauty of our municipality to people who travel all over the world, because I believe that we have something authentic. Some of the opportunities offered are a visit to the Old Town, a cruise on Lake Skadar and the promotion of all the potential of the Bar municipality. Although Bar is normally full of sunshine with around 270 sunny days a year, I regret to say that today is a rainy day. In any case, I believe that the guests will still have a good time in our city – said Nikčević.
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