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Displaying items by tag: ferry travel campaign

#FerryFortnight – National Ferry Fortnight, the annual campaign to promote ferry travel, gets under way today and runs to 29 March.

During the campaign there are special offers from twelve ferry operator members of National Ferry Fortnight. Almost half of them operate services on the Irish Sea, they are: Irish Ferries, Isle of Man Steam Packet Co, P&O Ferries and Stena Line. As well to Ireland-France services also operated by Irish Ferries.

So this is the best time to book a special offer to take the family on a ferry break. All the offers are available from the other ferry members operators that serve in the English Channel (including the Isle of Wight and Channel Islands), the North Sea, and Scottish Isles.

The operators are Brittany Ferries (also to Spain), Condor Ferries, CalMac, DFDS Seaways, Myferrylink, NorthLink Ferries, Red Funnel, and Wightlink.

To celebrate this year's National Ferry Fortnight there are special deals available, but hurry, as they have to be booked before 29 March and are subject to availability. For more visit: www.discoverferries.com.

Published in Ferry

About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).