The summer of 2023 is on track to break all tourist records. After the good hotel results in July and the skyrocketing bookings in August, Spanish ports have also seen their cruise numbers continue to grow this summer, with a total of 6.1 million passengers in the first seven months of the year. This represents a spectacular increase of 74.8% compared to 2022, a year in which many burdens of the pandemic were still being dragged along. The figure even exceeds by 7.6% that recorded in the legendary 2019, when 5.6 million cruise passengers docked in Spain during the same period and set 2019 as the devastating year against which all the tourism results since then.
Barcelona, ??with 1.8 million cruise passengers, tops the ranking of the most frequented ports, followed in second place by the Balearic Islands, with almost 1.3 million cruise passengers. The Canary Islands ports of Las Palmas and Tenerife are further away, although with excellent results, since during these first seven months of the year they have almost doubled the volume of cruise passengers.
The gradual return of large ships to the Mediterranean after the pandemic has allowed ports such as Barcelona to increase their passage in July, but to reduce the number of ships docked. Specifically, there have been eight fewer ships than in July 2022 (86 compared to 78), but this year’s records have included heavyweights such as the Symphony of the Seas (361 meters long), Anthem of the Seas (347) Arvia (344.5) Epic (329) or MSC World Europe (333). All with passages of between 4,000 and 6,500 capacity cruisers.
From the data provided by Ports de l’Estat, the performance of the port of Tarragona as a cruise port also stands out in a special way, with a growth of 140%, despite the fact that it still barely exceeds the 49,000 cruise passengers by a few dozen since beginning of the year
On a global scale, and also taking regular line passengers into account, the total passenger traffic in the 46 Spanish ports has also maintained a strong upward trend, with a growth of 27.6% until July, made which means 20.8 million passengers in total.
