krooztom

This is nonsense.

I have been sailing ships in the Med for over 30 years, and have never heard of this requirement.

My ship has also never followed any regulation like this.

At my staff meeting this morning we had a very good laugh over this fiction.

If you can show me a HAL cruise in the next 12 months which only does EU ports, I will book my next cruise with HAL.

So my follow up question to skipping ports is - do some cruise lines tend to skip more ports then others? I have cruised 9 times and this is the first time I experienced it. And when I started to look into this cruiseline, it appears they seem to do it consistently. I'm starting to think that from now on - I would like to research a cruise ship's past records in skipping ports before I choose which line to go with.

It all has to do with taxes:

In Europe a cruise ship itinerary has to include a non EU port, if the cruise line can claim tax free status...good for the overall profits as well that tax and duty free stores can stay open during the entire voyage.

Non EU ports include:

Norway

Canary Islands, even that they belong to Spain

Channel Islands

Gibraltar, often ships make only a "technical" stop there.

Monaco

Now it becomes clear why these ports are skipped so often.

Just a point of interest: Since Malta joined the EU in 2004, the number of arrivals has dropped by 50 %!

Since the unrest in Northern Africa, cruise lines are now in desperate search of non EU ports, and often will include them in their itinerary, but never really intend to "make port" there.