The last few days, I've been on a tour along the Danube. Both in Budapest and now in Novi Sad, I noticed that quite a few of these ships are registered in Basel.

Why's that? Sure, it's a Swiss city with a port. But is it also cheap? Or why do they chose Basel, of all places?

by alexs77

8 comments

  1. Basel is the home port of the Merchant Marine of Switzerland.
    (and it _is_ actually connected to the sea, in a navigable way)

  3. Aren’t these cruise ships, connecting from Basel to Budapest? They make use of canals between some of the major rivers. According to Google, it would be 16-day cruise, through five countries.

  6. Nearly non of these ships have ever seen Basel.

    The mother companies are in Switzerland and therefor all these ships are registered in Switzerland.

    This register is only in Basel so the ‘Mutterhafen’ is Basel.
    These is also for smaller boats going outside of Switzerland.
    We have a 15 Meter boat in the Netherlands with Basel on it.

  7. The open sea ends at the Mittlere Brücke in Basel. At least in a figurative sense. Up to this point, the river is considered international waters with free shipping traffic all the way to the North Sea. This means that not only all ships travelling abroad under the Swiss flag are registered in Basel.

  8. alot of these companies have a whole fleet of cruise ships. Basel is the end point of most rhine cruises going from amsterdam to basel. Also the donau is connected to the rhein by the river main, making Amsterdam/Basel – Budapest cruises possible. So basel being in the middle of everything is a good place to have headquarters.

Comments are closed.