BUSINESS

City’s Ferry Connection To Helsinki Set to Be Restored

By Yelena Zborovskaya

Vedomosti

A ferry connection between St. Petersburg and Helsinki is once again being launched after an 18-month gap.

From April this year, the St. Peter Line company will operate the Princess Maria passenger ferry, said Andrei Mushkarev, development director of Inflot Worldwide, which is the official representative and agent of the operator in St. Petersburg. St. Peter Line is registered in the EU, according to its site. Vedomosti was unable to contact the company.

The ferry, which will have a passenger capacity of 1,638, will depart from St. Petersburg every other day, said Mushkarev. The journey time will be 11 hours. The Princess Maria has 606 cabins and a car deck for 395 vehicles, and the minimum cost of a ticket will be 30 euros per person, he added. Mushkarev estimates that the average occupancy of the ferry will be about 80 percent.

In May last year, the Russian government passed a resolution allowing ferry passengers to visit Russia without a visa for up to 72 hours. Before this law was passed, attempts to launch a sea connection with Finland proved unsuccessful. There was a ferry connection to Helsinki from 2003 to 2006 and in 2008, but their occupancy rates were low, said Sergei Khokhlov, commercial director of West Travel. Now St. Petersburg will join the ferry transport network that connects the other countries located on the Baltic Sea, he said.

The volume of people traveling in both directions will increase by 10 to 15 percent, predicts Sergei Korneyev, vice president of the Russian Tourism Union. Mushkarev estimates that between October and May, an extra 100,000 to 150,000 foreign tourists could visit St. Petersburg. According to data from the city’s investment committee, 4.8 million tourists visited the city in 2009, of whom 2.3 million were foreign.

Demand for trips to Scandinavia decreased by 15 to 20 percent last year compared to 2008, said Khokhlov. The number of people going there from St. Petersburg is unlikely to increase, he said, since tourists have gotten used to going to Helsinki by train, bus or car. Mushkarev listed the advantages of going by ferry as getting through the border and passport control quickly.

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