Challenges facing the cruise seaports resulting from introduction of giant cruise vessels to the market

For a decade, giant cruise ships have been introduced to the market. Nowadays, the largest cruise ships have the length of over 360 meters, draught up to 10 meters and capacity of 225 000 GT. This type of vessels can only be handled in seaports with appropriate depth of waterways and proper length of berths, large manoeuvring basin and facilities on seacoasts ready to serve thousands of passengers at the same time. The aim of this article is to identify cruise shipowners’ requirements regarding seaport infrastructure and analysis of challenges facing port authorities in terms of adapting ports to new trends in the cruise shipping market. In the article, a few research methods were applied: exploration method of data, desk research method and comparative analysis.