The ship’s Captain, Massimo Garbarino, was greeted by members of the Balearic Port Authority and Intercruises Agent, Alejandro Picos.
The Costa Smeralda is part of the Costa Cruises fleet and is powered by LNG liquefied gas, has LED lights, electric motors and water filters.
It’s 337 metres long, has 20 decks and 1,628 cabins with balconies and can accommodate up to 6,554 passengers.
Mega Cruise Ship
The facilities onboard this mega-cruiser are amazing. There’s a museum dedicated to Italian design, including, fashion, furniture, vehicles and household items, from the 1930’s to the present day.
Passengers will love the ‘Volare’ walkway that stretches to the highest point on the ship and can also enjoy a wide range of bars, a chocolate shop, wine shop and ice cream parlour, a spa with thermal pools and sauna and more than 1,800 square feet of shops.
The Costa Smeralda will cruise between Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma, Civitavecchia and Cagliari and is scheduled to bring more than 300,000 tourists to Majorca this year.
Costa Smeralda is part of the Costa Group’s fleet expansion plan, with a total of seven new ships slated for delivery by 2023 and an overall investment worth over €6 billion. Of these new additions, five – including Costa Smeralda and her sister ship Costa Toscana scheduled to enter service in 2021 – will be fuelled by LNG.
The Costa Group was the first cruise operator in the world to introduce this ground-breaking innovation in favour of sustainability, which is set to substantially reduce the whole fleet’s environmental impact.
More specifically, the Italian cruise company intends to achieve a 40% reduction in its fleet’s CO2 emissions by 2020, some 10 years ahead of the target laid down by IMO (International Maritime Organization). On account of her outstanding environmental performance, which goes far beyond current regulatory requirements, Costa Smeralda has been awarded the Green Plus, the highest additional voluntary notation assigned by RINA (international certification body) to ships that are environmentally compliant.
“With the entry into service of Costa Smeralda, the use of LNG for cruise ships has become more and more a reality, bringing immediate tangible benefits in terms of reduced environmental impact. The Costa Group was the first to believe in this technology and we’re investing in the construction of some five new LNG-fuelled ships, thus advancing on the path towards increasingly sustainable tourism,” said Costa Cruises President Neil Palomba.
Palomba added: “Costa Smeralda is an unprecedented project, also because she combines environmental innovation with product innovation, offering holiday experiences the likes of which have never been seen before, albeit while retaining Italian hospitality as the basic distinguishing feature of our brand.”
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Is this the Ship where 2 passengers may have the new Coronavirus. ?