Royan (France)

Royan is an Atlantic cruise port and seaside resort town in southwestern France (Charente-Maritime department, Nouvelle-Aquitaine region) with a population of around 20,000 (urban around 50,000). Cote de Beaute (a portion of the French Atlantic coastline/southeast of Arvert) has Royan as its capital city. Cote de Beaute includes a total of 8 seaside resorts - Royan, Palmyra (Les Mathes), Saint-Palais-sur-Mer, Vaux-sur-Mer, Saint-Georges-de-Didonne, Meschers-Sur-Gironde, Le Verdon-sur-Mer, and Soulac-Sur-Mer.

Royan features a large, premium boat marina (used for berthing of sail ships, pleasure craft, luxury motor yachts, and mega-yachts) and all five large beaches (conches). The yacht marina has the capacity to handle over 1000 vessels. Royan is also a commercial fishing port with its own fleet.

Royan is on the Arvert Peninsula (Bay of Biscay) and at the mouth of Gironde River estuary's eastern shore. At the end of WW2 (1939-1945), during two air raids by British and US bombers (September 1944, April 1945) the town was completely destroyed. This explains the current city's Modernist-style (1950s) architecture. Today, Royan is a very popular resort vacation destination in France, visited each year by around 90,000 tourists during the summer season.

Royan is approx 65 km (40 mi) from La Rochelle (Charente-Maritime department's capital city), approx 100 km (60 ml) from Bordeaux, and approx 510 km (315 mi) from Paris City (France's capital). High-speed TGV trains link to Paris and Bordeaux (Medoc region). Nearest international airports are Ile de Re (La Rochelle) and Merignac (Bordeaux). Regular daily scheduled ferries (run by TransGironde) connect Royan with Le Verdon. The ferry service (~20-min in each direction) provides passenger-car-truck-bicycle transportation across the estuary to the Medoc wine region.

As cruise port, Royan was included in the regular 2020 schedule of one of Europe's (and world's) largest river cruise companies - CroisiEurope. The next table shows the ports sequence of CroisiEurope's 6-day cruise tour through the Aquitaine Region, Gironde Estuary, and Garonne and Dordogne Rivers.

The itinerary is operated by the 2013-built ship Cyrano de Bergerac and priced from ~USD 1000 per person (double occupancy porthole cabin rates).

In 2019, Port Royan was expanded with a 54-m (177-ft) long pontoon dock and now can accommodate two ships simultaneously, each with max LOA length 135 m (443 ft). At the dock is also provided shoreside power.