Brittany Ferries figures are out!

[Steven]

Brittany Ferries figures have been released and give us our first real indication of how CONNEMARA is doing. As alluded to previously it looks like she hasn't had a great first season. Her passenger figures to Spain have been bundled in with UK to Spain rather unhelpfully (why hide them?), but doing some rough sums if we give her credit for the entire increase in traffic on all Spanish routes we are looking at an average of 280 passengers per sailing (in the PEAK season!!!). Her sailings to France have only added less than 4000 passengers over 3 months (again assuming she is responsible for the entirety of the increase. Freight volumes across the network are down 5% with no individual breakdown unfortunately). They also haven't been giving figures to shippax for Cork to Spain either, but they would need to be carrying a lot more freight than they are between Cork and Roscoff for which I have seen figures! Hopefully the only way is up for the route(s).

[giftgrub]

Sad to see, but all images from blogs etc have indicated low levels of passenger and freight, unless there is a big increase in 19, I would doubt we will see Connemara in service for BF this time next year.

Ironically could join Stena Horizon on a daily Rosslare France service if BF decide to terminate service.

[Steven]

Sad to see, but all images from blogs etc have indicated low levels of passenger and freight, unless there is a big increase in 19, I would doubt we will see Connemara in service for BF this time next year.

Ironically could join Stena Horizon on a daily Rosslare France service if BF decide to terminate service.

Things don't look a heck of a lot better there to be honest.  She has given them an uplift in freight, but nowhere near enough to justify her.  Much of that will count on contracts with the other operators moving across though.  There has been a bit of speculation that the route could be pulled, fuelled even more by the unexplained delay in the timetable being released for next year.

[giftgrub]

2019 Stena to France sailings are on sale, have friends booked on next summer, have been in Rosslare some evenings before departure and sailings look busy, don't have numbers obviously.

Stena have got to give this a big push now, IF have massive investments coming and also for Rosslare the Neptune Lines sailing seemed to have quite a few trailers loaded on the Santander crossing a few weeks ago.

However the numbers don't lie, and if we loose these services we can hardly complain if the ferry companies send them where the work is.

[Steven]

2019 Stena to France sailings are on sale, have friends booked on next summer, have been in Rosslare some evenings before departure and sailings look busy, don't have numbers obviously.

Stena have got to give this a big push now, IF have massive investments coming and also for Rosslare the Neptune Lines sailing seemed to have quite a few trailers loaded on the Santander crossing a few weeks ago.

However the numbers don't lie, and if we loose these services we can hardly complain if the ferry companies send them where the work is.

The Neptune service is an interesting one.  Obviously there is already a significant amount of freight using Rosslare so it's almost an extension of the existing services there to GB and France.  Cork on the other hand doesn't have the same as of yet, and no real alternatives should a load miss a sailing. Or the sailing is cancelled for whatever reason. With Rosslare there's always the land bridge as a backup option!  It was always going to take time to build up traffic on this new service.

On another note, quite a decline in passenger numbers using Portsmouth- Cherbourg!