The Sun Princess, a cruise ship operated by Princess Cruises, has notified its customers over the weekend that it will not be making a stop at the Greek island of Santorini in 2024 due to congestion issues that would negative affect the visitors’ experience.
In an email communication to guests on , the Princess Cruises stated, “Please note that there is a change to our scheduled itinerary. Due to cruise ship congestion, we will no longer call to Santorini, Greece.”
The email elaborated that the anticipated situation would lead to significant overcrowding, detracting from the overall visitor experience.
“We apologize for the inconvenience and disappointment this change may cause,” the message conveyed.
Originally slated to visit Santorini on June 11, the 15-deck Sun Princess will now redirect its course to the port of Chania on the island of Crete, as alternative destination. However, there have been slight adjustments to the port times to accommodate this change.
Cruise ships congestion
The Sun Princess was originally scheduled to visit Santorini on June 11, 2024. On that date, four other ships are also scheduled for the port – Star Clipper, Costa Fascinosa, MSC Divina, and Odyssey of the Seas.
When combined with Sun Princess‘ capacity of 4,300 guests, this could mean more than 17,000 cruise travelers visiting the island in a single day, noted the cruisehive.com, addind that Santorini itself only has a resident population of roughly 15,500.
Chania on the island of Crete, however, only has one other ship – Azamara Pursuit – scheduled for June 11, 2024. This means the community with a population of 111,000 will have a total of roughly 5,000 cruise guests with Sun Princess‘ arrival.
Smaller crowds mean cruise visitors can have their pick of shore excursions without worry that tour operators will be quickly booked, and there will be more opportunities to enjoy the local sites, attractions, restaurants, and more without feeling overcrowded.
When cruise guests have an unpleasant port experience, they may blame the cruise line for the crowds, but such an itinerary change can alleviate that issue and ensure a more enjoyable port day for all travelers.
Ignoring the Berth Allocation and its consequences for Santorini
Website sustainablecyclades.gr had already warned that a visitors’ increase of 30% was expected in 2024 and 2025 and that the cruise visitors limit was not applied to the island.
This resulted in confusion at the port of Athenio. the old port of Fira and the cable car, with endless queues. The same was true for the streets of the island and the alleys of Fira, Oia and the traditional settlements, which were filled with visitors, resulting in various problems, creating a negative experience for the visitor and thousands of unflattering comments about the island that circulate people on social networks.
In a recent press conference by the Mayor of Thira, Nikos Zorgou, it was said that in a meetings of the Municipality with cruise companies, they tried to jointly find a solution so that the limit of 8,000 visitors per day applies, as until today the Berth Allocation and the limit of simultaneous visitors were not applied.
Despite the intentions, it does not seem possible for them to succeed, at least for 2024, as the itineraries that will approach the island have been designed.
Our own information says that the cruise disembarks on the island much more people than the limit that the Municipality wants to set, the website stressed.
According to Zorziou, the cruise lines were positive about Berth Allocation and there would be an effort on their part to maintain a limit as they also want their customers to have the best possible experience when they visit a place. Our information tells us that they have several unhappy customers complaining about their experience in Santorini” so sustainablecyclades.gr.
Overtourism threatens Santorini
According to secure information from santorinimagazine, on his last itinerary to Santorini in March there was a disturbance about how he would be served. The problem was the height of the ship which does not allow the exit of passengers in the usual way, i.e. with the boats that transport the visitors to the port of Athenio and the bay of Fira. For this reason, a special platform was used. According to the same information, Sun Princess faced the same problem in other ports, such as in Piraeus.
Apart from the technical problems , priority for the cruise lines is the experience that the passengers will get.
The application of Berth Allocation and the limit of visitors is not an opinion, it is a necessity, and there are not a few European cities that not only apply it, but have taken decisions that regulate the flows even more.
In Santorini, however, decisions such as the entry ticket imposed by Venice in order to prevent some visitors cannot be implemented, as there is no institutional framework for such a decision, said Mayor Zorzos.
Knowing the picture of bookings on the island, things for Santorini are not auspicious for this year. The first figures show that we have a noticeable decrease in bookings and the people who are going to reach the island are largely not those who will visit a restaurant, a shop, an archaeological site, a winery, etc.
The business community of Santorini and the agencies need to seriously look at what needs to be done to correct the image of the island and the problems it faces, with a plan and not temporary solutions.
The paradox is that despite the messages, there are voices trying to demolish the concept of overtourism talking about “spot crowding”.
They forget that “overtourism” does not necessarily indicate too many people in a place, but the inability to cope with its infrastructure, the inability to serve the visitor, the bad experience he gets, the traffic problem, the poor quality of life of the residents, the lack of water, the power outages, the inability to manage the waste left by tourists, the uncontrolled construction in order to meet the demand and so many other “evils” that we would not like to see, stressed sustainblecyclades.gr.
PS A plan to impose a cap on cruise visitors on Santorini was already expressed in 2018!
Santorini is not the only Cyclades island falling victim to much to many visitors. when the first cruise ship docked on the island of Mykonos beginning of the spring, some locals expressed on social media posts their concern of “overtourism” also in 2024. Warning voices were raised already in 2020.
Also other popular destinations like Halkidiki suffer from water and power outages every summer due to overtourism.
Worth noting that there is no respond by the Greek Tourism Ministry nor any legislative initiative, as for the conservative neo-liberal government “tourism is the heavy inustry” of the country and there is no “light” one.
everywhere down here in the islands, a handful of developers and big hotel operators, etc, have grotesquely overloaded the whole place with tourists and strained every last item of infrastructure to the breaking point, all for their precious tourist dollars. actual citizens are relegated to second-class status, pushed to the side and barely even tolerated. They take all the island’s water to fill swimming pools and flush toilets for tourists, while our wells and even villages’ public water supplies run dry. If you were to take a snapshot on a random day in july or august you’d find 4 or even 5 tourists for every one actual resident on the island. Not to mention the corrosive effects on society and culture that come over the longer term with mass tourism. not to mention the absurd property pricing where actual locals cant afford to buy or rent a place to live anymore. There might be 2 or 3 percent of the island’s population who really profit from this and everyone else just has their home land, their environment, their society, everything, degraded for that precious profit.
tourism was never a good idea for the basis of an economy. As a very small extra on the top of an otherwise productive economy, okay, it can work – like in switzerland or japan – but never as the staple.