VIP - Vessel Information Platform - the European ship information system -

VIP (Vessel Information Platform) is a new integral information and data platform for ship voyages. VIP is based on the ship departure list SHIPS, but has more functions and an extended database. Besides the ship departures for the Port of Hamburg, the ship departures and arrivals for all other major container ports in Europe can also be called up. Alongside the Port of Hamburg, this includes the ports of Bremerhaven, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Zeebrugge, Felixstowe, Southampton, Le Havre and Genoa.

The Hamburg ship voyages (corresponding to SHIPS) as well as the European shipping timetables of some carriers for all European ports are integrated in the first development stage of VIP. By the end of the year, the VIP platform is set to be extended with ship voyages for all European main ports. Besides Internet access, all customers are free to integrate the VIP ship voyages into their company's IT landscape via a standardized EDIFACT interface.

The established ship departure list SHIPS was commissioned by DAKOSY as one of the first free online services as early as 1984. In the early stages, the ship departures communicated by fax or letter had to be entered manually in the IT database by DAKOSY. Since the middle of the 1990s, the shipping companies and liner agents have also been able to perform the notifications via EDI interfaces and/or the SHIPS Internet.