From NIFerry yesterday:
Stena Line is celebrating winning the ‘Best Ferry Company’ category at the Northern Ireland Travel and Tourism Awards for the 30th time. The awards event is the highlight of the Northern Ireland tourism industry year and was held on 13 October.
In the 31-year history of the awards, there is only one occasion when Stena Line and predecessor Stena Sealink Line didn’t win the award. This was when P&O Ferries had a one-off success in the mid-1990s. The event, organised by NI Travel News, was held at the Slieve Donard Resort and Spa and was attended by travel industry VIPs from across the UK and Ireland.
https://www.niferry.co.uk/stena-line-celebrates-winning-best-ferry-company-yet-again/
From Stena Line on 26 August 2022:
Punctuality 61% of sailings within +/- 5 minutes of timetable, target of 67%.
https://theferryforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=506
For CalMac, “On Time” is defined as arriving within 5 minutes of the published arrival time on routes with a crossing time of up to 30 minutes or arriving within 10 minutes of the published arrival time on routes with a crossing time between 31 and 90 minutes or arriving within 15 minutes of the published arrival time on routes with a crossing time of more than 90 minutes.
https://www.calmac.co.uk/corporate/route-performance/information
Not quite the same assessment but using the above criteria, CalMac is operating at 95.4% on time: https://www.calmac.co.uk/calmac-performance-data-browser
Talking-up Scotland 
Ah, but ….. most ferry services from the north of Ireland go to English ports, ergo, it is axiomatic that however they perform by any criteria, they MUST must be better than Scotland, because Scotland is dependent on England, because it is just not genetically programmed to manage its own affairs.
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If Stena is NI’s best ferry company the others must be pretty dire! My most recent journey from Belfast to Cairnryan in August this year had its departure delayed by over three hours, then once underway reduced speed due to a “technical issue” eventually calling for a tugboat from the Clyde to help it dock in Cairnryan. This was then cancelled and the boat finally docked under its own power at 11.45pm, the voyage having taken over 5 hours instead of 2 hours 15 minutes, causing massive inconvenience to all passengers. The passenger experience during the 9 hours on the vessel was appalling with many security guards put on station to keep order.
The previous year on the same route the boat was over an hour late in departing, then lost power in one engine several times during the trip and was almost 3 hours late in docking at Cairnryan…
Having used CalMac regularly for the last 40 years I consider them to be far more efficient and reliable than the Stena Line.
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However laudable Calmac’s performance, I’d be chary of attaching much importance to punctuality given the unpredictability of variables in play for any vessel.
I recall one contribution to this blog at the height of ‘ferrydoom’, bemoaning one particular ferry being 15 minutes late at Brodick “all day” – The poster never explained how the original delay which knocked the schedule out might have been recovered, but I imagine cancellation of one sailing to bring the schedule back on track to satisfy his expectations, would have resulted in his inner ‘Victor Meldrew’ having an apoplectic fit…
I’ve been on journeys where the ‘captain’ refused to sail until all available space had been taken – Nobody batted an eyelid because it was quite simply ‘normal’….
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“Northern Ireland’s ‘Best Ferry Company’ is far less punctual than CalMac”
If only that as an example was, as a gauge, how the BBC here in Scotland presented some of their news reports in relation to the performance of Ferries here and elsewhere ……instead of it being obviously considered by them, as an example, to be one that is consigned to always being a ‘NO GO’ area for them to ever contemplate broadcasting…..and also tis NOT one that is unique as an example via all of the other topics that they choose to TARGET, in what has become, very much a predictable pattern in their (ab)normal behaviour (poor output) as ‘news’ broadcasters here in Scotland.
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Wow
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