Fleet & capacity
The port owns its coaches
At the head of a 205 km fjord there is no coach capacity to borrow on the morning of a call, so the port owns its fleet outright: 13 coaches, 577 seats — and with contracted capacity on top, 19 coaches on every call in 2026.
Last updated 2026-09-13
The owned fleet
13 coaches, 577 seats
| No. | Model | Year | Seats each | Seats | Primary use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | King Long C12HD | 2026 | 47 | 470 | Main excursion fleet |
| 2 | Temsa MD9 | — | 34 | 68 | Tindevegen and Berdalsnosi — under the 10 m limit |
| 1 | Temsa MD9 | — | 39 | 39 | Tindevegen and Berdalsnosi |
| 13 | Total, own fleet | — | — | 577 | Dispatched by the port |
Two numbers, counted separately
Owned fleet and contracted capacity
Owned: 13 coaches, 577 seats
On the port's books, driven by drivers on the port's payroll and allocated by the port. Nothing has to be negotiated for them to be available on a given date.
Contracted: capacity on every call
Coach capacity held under agreement with a carrier. It applies to every call rather than being requested call by call, and is added on top of the owned vehicles.
Correcting the record
The previous website described a “20-bus staging model” and a news item referred to “20 coaches”. Neither figure is correct, and neither separated owned vehicles from contracted capacity. The same website gave the Temsa MD9 as 9.5 m and called it specially built; it is 9.3 m and a series-production vehicle. This page replaces all three.
Why ownership is the argument
Coach seats, not the berth, set the limit
It is 70 km to the nearest airport and 95 km to the nearest hospital. A destination that charters its coaches bids for them against every other port on the coast, then finds out on the day whether it won.
The port bought the fleet instead. The practical benefit for a cruise line is that the programme sold to guests months in advance is underwritten by vehicles and drivers the port controls — and why the port bought its own coaches is a decision it has put on the record.
Seats are only half of it. Hours ashore decide how often a coach can be reused — a 10-hour call gives 9 hours, and the capacity curve behind that is on the shore excursions page. Run as a shuttle a coach never parks: it turns at the viewpoint and goes straight back, carrying its seat count several times over on Best of Skjolden, 9 round trips; on Oscarshaug, 7 round trips; on Berdalsnosi, 4 round trips; on Urnes, 6 round trips. Capacity here is vehicle hours, not vehicles.
Specification
What the vehicles are
Guides
50+ certified guides, in the ship's language
20–30 of the pool work in English. The staffing rule: German-speaking guides are staffed for German-language ships.
Lines carrying German-language guests will not take an English guide working through a translator, so German staffing is planned as standard and the translator is a fallback the ship has to approve.
Guides are recruited and certified locally, not brought in for the day. Guide and dispatch terms are commercial rather than tariff: on request from shorex@skjoldenport.com.
On the water
Catamaran and support craft
M/S Holly is the port's catamaran and works the fjord tours out of Skjolden: 73 guests a departure. Her passenger certificate reads 74, and the difference is the guide — the coaches carry a dedicated guide seat outside the passenger count, and the catamaran does not.
Plan against 73. That number is hard and does not scale with the coach fleet, so sailings are planned against the tour programme rather than against ship size.
A dedicated mooring launch is on station through every call.
Before the call
How the fleet is committed to a call
Preliminary numbers are expected 90 days before arrival (one month accepted), and final numbers 48 hours before arrival. Finals are the point at which vehicles and guides are locked to the call.
On the morning itself the fleet has fixed positions on the quay — see where the coaches stand on the day.
One further requirement is operational rather than commercial: bus list with driver names and registration plates several days in advance — plates are loaded into the ANPR gate.
Tour operators and DMCs bringing their own coach and guide are handled through the pier access process, not through the port's fleet.
