No hike in ferry ticket prices this summer after port fees halved

Ticket prices for accepted ferries successful Greece will stay unchanged this summertime aft the Greek shipping ministry reduced larboard fees by 50%, easing the unit connected the shipping manufacture arsenic new, stricter emissions regulations travel into force.

In December 2022, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) announced that the Mediterranean Sea will go an Emission Control Area (ECA) starting connected 1 May, 2025. This means the sulphur contented of substance used connected committee ships indispensable not transcend 0.1%, a important simplification from the erstwhile bounds of 0.5%. The lone objection is for ships equipped with scrubbers which guarantee an equivalent simplification successful sulphur oxide (SOx) emissions.

This regularisation is expected to importantly trim aerial contamination levels successful the Mediterranean portion and its coastal states, benefiting some quality wellness and the environment. It besides means that ships will present person to use much costly (“greener”) substance which would person pushed summons prices higher.

Before the ministry’s announcement, coastal shipping companies had announced that they would hike prices for αυτοκίνητο ferries by 12%-15%.

“The simplification successful planetary lipid prices combined with the inaugural of Shipping Minister Vassilis Kikilias to enforce a 50% simplification successful larboard fees is holding backmost the operating costs of coastal shipping companies, barring unforeseen circumstances, with the effect that the increases successful summons prices that were budgeted earlier this year owed to much costly substance will not beryllium required,” Dionysis Theodoratos, president of the Passenger Shipping Companies Association, told Kathimerini.

Kikilias welcomed the Greek industry’s decision. “We are perpetually working successful this direction, to support the Greek household successful traveling from the country’s mainland destinations and the large ports to each the islands,” helium said.

Market sources said that the simplification successful larboard fees increases unit connected the companies to besides trim prices connected highspeed ferries, which already use the much costly substance (Marine Gasoil-MGO) that is present imposed connected accepted ones. The Price Observatory of the Ministry of Shipping and Insular Policy has observed that the largest increases successful summons prices successful erstwhile years, arsenic well arsenic the astir costly transport outgo per mile traveled, were recorded connected the fashionable intra-Cycladic highspeed ferry routes.