It's now known when passenger ship services between Riga and Stockholm will resume

For more than a year, there has been no passenger ship service from Riga, so many Latvian travelers traveled to Stockholm or Helsinki from the port of Tallinn. However, soon there will again be an opportunity to take a cruise from Riga.

Passenger ship traffic on the Riga-Stockholm route is scheduled to resume on April 6 this year, Tallink Grupp informs. It is not yet known whether everyone will be able to take the trip or whether a Covid-19 certificate will be a prerequisite.

Isabelle is expected to resume its journey from Riga to Stockholm on April 6, providing a sea connection between the Latvian and Swedish capitals every other day. According to the company's website, the round trip will cost from €89 per person (adult).

Asked whether customers will be required to have a Covid-19 certificate, Esēnija Zīriņa, Public Relations Project Manager at Tallink Latvija, says:

"It is too early to comment on the travel rules at the moment, and these are not set by Tallink Grupp, but by the laws and regulations of each country. If such a requirement has to be met at the time of the resumption of operations, then the rules will be followed accordingly."

Temporary routes

Before the pandemic started, two ships, Romantika and Isabelle, provided sea travel from Riga. On March 16, 2020, regular trips were suspended. At that time, borders were closed almost all over Europe. During these two years, normal shipping services were not restored. However, some temporary routes were introduced, for example between Riga and Helsinki, opening up the possibility for people to travel in the so-called Baltic bubble, which included, among others, Finland. "Special trips from Riga to Åland were also organized for the summer of 2020. The temporary Riga-Helsinki route was operated until autumn 2020 with various ships from the company's fleet (Silja Serenade, Romantika and Baltic Queen). However, due to the worsening epidemiological situation and travel restrictions, the temporary route between the capitals of Latvia and Finland had to be closed," explains E. Zīriņa.

Passenger numbers are down

Covid-19 has also affected other Tallink Grupp ship routes over the past two years, including temporary closures.

In 2021, Tallink Grupp carried a total of 2,961,975 passengers on all of its routes, a 20.6% decrease compared to 2020 (3,732,102 passengers in 2020). The only route with an increase in passenger traffic in 2021 compared to 2020 was the Tallinn-Stockholm route, which resumed operations in July 2021, after a break of almost one and a half years from March 2020.

"Although the traveler numbers are yet again lower than we would have liked them to be in 2021, we are pleased that the second half of the year saw a near 21% increase in passenger numbers and we were able to re-open some of our popular routes half way through 2021, which had remained suspended since the start of the pandemic. The reopening of routes has given many people more opportunities to revisit family, relatives, and friends, which is more important than ever during this long period of isolation and seclusion. We hope that once we get past the ongoing Omicron wave and the low winter season, we will soon reach a phase in the fight against the virus, which signals that we are nearing the end of our fight and our ultimate defeat of Covid and we can start to rebuild our lives, businesses, societies," says Paavo Nõgene, CEO of Tallink Grupp.