Keep an eye on cruise ship arrivals

Orkney Islands Council’s Marine Services team has launched a new Twitter feed to keep local folk up to date with changes to cruise ship comings and goings this summer.

The @cruise_orkney feed will provide up to the minute information on cruise ships in Orkney, particularly changed arrival and departure times and any cancellations.

The tweets will also automatically appear on the OIC Updates Facebook page.

It’s hoped that local businesses in particular will use the service to plan their day accordingly.

Orkney’s first cruise ship call is this Sunday (9 April). The Astoria will arrive in Kirkwall at 08:00 and depart at 18:00.

Orkney is due to host 140 cruise ship visits between now and September with a potential passenger figure of 123,000, from the maximum capacity of 136,000.

Sixty three of these visits will be from cruise ships with a passenger capacity of less than 500 – 41 of which will have under 200 passengers. Twenty-three of the ships will have a passenger capacity of over 2000, with only nine having a passenger capacity of over 3000. The biggest ship to visit this year will be the MSC Preziosa with a passenger capacity of 4345, arriving in Orkney on 10 May, 7 June, 28 July and 22 August.

Stromness will host 21 cruise ship visits this year, with Lyness receiving its first cruise port call on 5 June.

A full list of the cruise ship visits for this year is available at https://www.cruise-orkney.com/.

You don’t need to join Twitter to see the @cruise_orkney tweets. Visit https://twitter.com/cruise_orkney. A box will pop up inviting you to join Twitter and you can simply close it by clicking on the cross in the top right hand corner.