Dubrovnik has suffered at the hands of the cruise ship industry for several years now. As the environment is threatened and the situation with these gigantic floating cities grows ever more problematic, Dubrovnik made several promises to limit the number of cruise ships allowed to enter the Port of Dubrovnik (Gruž), but the complaints just kept rolling in regardless of that fact. Has TUI provided an answer to this burning issue, at least partially?
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes on the 17th of September, 2019, the City of Dubrovnik, TUI Cruise and the Global Cruisers Association CLIA organised a tour of TUI’s Mein Schiff 6 cruiser in the port of Gruž on Monday this week, which outlined not only ultra-modern technology, but a very impressive environmental policy applied by the company on board their ships.
The southern Dalmatian city of Dubrovnik is the first city with which CLIA signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Tourism Sustainability back in July, which also envisages a joint tourism sustainability study in future.
According to Maria Deligianni of CLIA, cruise companies have invested around 22 billion euros globally in new environmental technologies, and TUI Cruise is the leader in this trend, with its youngest fleet and new technology designed for sustainable development.
“We understand the problem Dubrovnik has with the crowds and we want to be active in resolving it,” she said. Among other things, the plan is to build a facility at the Gruž Harbour which will also aid in making the situation there a little less alarming.
We’re working on a design solution. The Mein Schiff 6 boat we visited has a very strict environmental policy, they themselves produce seawater, purify sweage, separate waste, and the sulfur emissions from the fuel are at a minimal 0.1 percent,” revealed Ivana Zore, environmental director at Mein Schiff, who is otherwise from the City of Split, another popular Croatian city which has been experiencing increasing issues with cruisers.
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