Record first six months for NorthLink as demand grows

NORTHLINK has hailed a record first six months of 2024 as demand for the lifeline ferry service continues to grow. 

Managing director Stuart Garrett said the number of passengers, freight and cars using their Lerwick-Aberdeen route were at their highest level for six years.

And the number of passengers using NorthLink’s Northern Isles ferries are up on 2019 – a previous record year for the company.

Garrett said 301,631 people had travelled on the Lerwick-Kirkwall-Aberdeen route in the first six months of this year.

The number of cars using NorthLink’s ferries was up a “staggering” 22 per cent from 2019.

The NorthLink chief said the operator had also seen a “really significant increase” in the number of people using their pods in the peak June, July and August months.

Only 17 per cent of people had rated the pods as “poor” after using them, he told a meeting of Shetland’s external transport forum on Tuesday, with 26 per cent rating them as “excellent”.

Of those that had given them the lowest rating, Garrett said most respondents had made comment about not being able to get a cabin.

Green councillor Alex Armitage asked if people booking a four-berth cabin for themselves and then sharing it with other people, as seen often on social media, was being picked up in NorthLink’s data around the usage of cabins.

Garrett said NorthLink cleaning staff were telling them how many berths in a cabin were having to be cleaned to keep their data up to date.

And he stressed the company “won’t police that necessarily like people think we might”.