2023-08-25 08:18:53
Cruise passenger traffic in Spanish ports has exceeded pre-pandemic levels during the first half of 2023. Specifically, a total of 4.94 million cruise passengers transited through Spanish ports, which represents an improvement of 5% compared to the pre-pandemic figures, according to State Ports.
This increase is added to the arrival of 2,070 cruise ships in Spain during the same stage, which translates into a growth of 8.4% compared to 2019. Compared to the activity registered last year, the number of cruise passengers it significantly exceeded the levels registered in 2022 by 87.1%. However, there has been a small drop of 1.6% in the total number of cruises.
During the month of June, the last period with available data, a total of 1,021,941 cruise passengers were recorded in Spanish ports. This represented a 19% growth in relation to the volume registered in the same month before the pandemic and a remarkable increase of 65% compared to the previous year.
In the first half of the year, global passenger traffic in Spanish ports, which includes both regular line services and cruise ships, reached a total of 15.6 million users (10.7 million on regular services and another 4 9 million in cruises). These figures reflected an increase of 2.4% compared to 2019 and a notable increase of 36.3% compared to 2022.
Dividing the activity monthly, it is worth mentioning that total passenger traffic (considering both regular and cruise passengers) exceeded 3.5 million in the month of June. This figure has represented a growth of 18% compared to the same month of the previous year and an increase of 7.3% in relation to the year 2019. Of this figure, 2.4 million corresponded to passengers on regular line services, while 1.02 million were cruise ship passengers.
On the other hand, maritime connections continue to increase on the peninsula. For example, Cosco Shipping Lines has launched the new Turkey Spain Morocco Express service during the second week of August, which will link the Spanish ports of Barcelona and Valencia with Greece and Turkey and also with the Port of Casablanca (Morocco).
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