Starting in May 2022 Costa Venezia will offer cruises to Turkey, departing from Istanbul, an absolute and exclusive innovation. Costa Venezia will further strengthen Costa’s offer in the Mediterranean, where it will join Costa Toscana. The new flagship will be delivered as scheduled in December 2021, entering service on March 5, 2022.
Costa Cruises is making some important updates to its 2022-23 programs, regarding two of the newest and most innovative ships in its fleet: Costa Venezia, which entered service in 2019, and Costa Toscana, which is currently under construction.
In anticipation of the return of cruise operations to Asia, Costa Cruises has decided to bring Costa Venezia back to the Mediterranean. At the heart of the new offer will be a truly unique, never-before-seen cruise program, that will set sail from Istanbul, Turkey. In line with the cruise line’s plan to gradually resume operations, Costa has also decided to move the entry into service of its new flagship, Costa Toscana, to March 2022
Costa Venezia will first set sail from Istanbul in May 2022. Costa Venezia will further strengthen Costa’s offer in the Mediterranean, where Costa Toscana will sail from March 2022.
Costa Venezia’s new program in Turkey includes three different itineraries, all with embarkation and disembarkation in Istanbul. They are designed to provide for longer stopovers in the ports, which allow guests to fully enjoy some of the most beautiful experiences of each destination, visiting cities rich in history, ancient ruins, UNESCO World Heritage sites and wonderful beaches.
From May 1 to November 13, 2022, Costa Venezia will offer two one-week itineraries dedicated to Turkey and Greece, alternating with each other, which can also be combined into a single 15-day ‘super tour’ with eight port calls of more than 10 hours. The first itinerary includes a two-day, one-night stopover in Istanbul, the beautiful Turkish destinations of Izmir and Bodrum, the island of Mykonos and Athens in Greece. The second itinerary includes two two-day, one-night stops in Istanbul and Kusadasi, Turkey, before heading out to explore Rhodes and Heraklion, Greece. In winter 2022-23, Costa Venezia will offer a third 12-day itinerary in Turkey, Egypt, Israel and Cyprus, which will visit Istanbul, with a stop of two days and one night, Bodrum, Limassol, Haifa, again with a stop of two days and one night, Alexandria in Egypt and Kusadasi.
The shore excursions portfolio designed for Costa Venezia cruises will allow guests to enjoy special experiences such as Ephesus by night with a private concert in a Roman amphitheater, admiring the lights of the Bosphorus by night. Other unique experiences include sleeping in houses carved into the rock in the lunar landscapes of Cappadocia, discovering the natural pools of Pamukkale, but also the Parthenon in Athens, the beaches of Mykonos and Rhodes, Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
The new flagship Costa Toscana, Costa’s second LNG-powered ship, will be delivered as scheduled in December 2021, and enter service on March 5, 2022. The itinerary the ship will offer from that date will remain unchanged, with week-long cruises in the Western Mediterranean visiting Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Valencia, Palermo, Civitavecchia/Rome. The Costa Toscana cruises originally scheduled from December 18, 2021 until early March 2022 will instead be operated by Costa Luminosa, which will therefore cancel its program of long winter cruises in the Mediterranean due to the restrictions currently in place in Israel.