SARTORI & BERGER Establishing New Cruise Division at Hamburg

German maritime services provider SARTORI & BERGER has extended its presence at Hamburg: A new team comprising both experienced and newly employed staff has started working at the company's Hamburg branch office on 1st February. In future it will coordinate all services provided to cruise vessels calling the Port of Hamburg.

"Hamburg is a very important German cruise hub and highly in demand among our clients", said Simone Tommaso Maraschi, General Manager and Head of Cruise Services at SARTORI & BERGER, "responding to this development we have decided to establish a new team in charge of cruise services locally at Hamburg. It consists of some long-standing and experienced port agents as well as a couple of new employees who have joined SARTORI & BERGER at the be- ginning of February". The new team is based at the company's Hamburg branch office located at Mattentwiete 6 right in the city centre and very close to both cruise terminals. In future the new team will coordinate all services provided to cruise vessels calling Hamburg. This includes port agency attendance as well as passenger-related products (ground handling and shore excursions).

SARTORI & BERGER has had an own branch office in Hamburg for decades which attends car- go and passenger vessels calling Germany's busiest port. "The main innovation of our new structure implemented on 1st February is that we now have a team dedicated exclusively to services for cruise ships", explains Simone Tommaso Maraschi, "apart from agency services – which were provided locally even before – this team will now also coordinate our passenger- related services. So far, our main office in Kiel has been in charge of doing that when we at- tended cruise calls in Hamburg". Maraschi says the new structure responds to the ongoing strong growth of cruise tourism in Hamburg and to customer demand: "Our cruise line clients regard it as very important to have just one point of contact for all enquiries and orders com- ing up around a port call. Our new structure helps to serve this demand in the best possible way. All our employees involved with cruise ships are now working in one and the same of- fice, a layout which makes it easy to exchange information and to coordinate processes con- tinually. This, in turn, contributes to a smooth port operation, to a high service level and to an optimisation of costs which we can forward to our clients by offering them highly competitive fees", concludes Maraschi.