A 7.5% decrease in cruise ships on the Adriatic was seen in July 2017.
Ah, cruise ships, cruise tourism, reducing cruise ships, monitoring cruise ships, in fact anything to do with people on boats - by far our favourite topic and one of those things we just love to hate in Dubrovnik, it comes a close second to moaning about traffic and cheap fridge magnets.
All the praiseworthy talk from Mayor Mato Franković about reducing numbers and properly controlling foreign cruise vessels visiting the Pearl of the Adriatic has Dubrovnik's local media excitedly chirping away, with a new story about it surfacing on some portal or another every few days.
It seems however, despite the constant complaining from citizens of Dubrovnik (myself among the most frequent), cruise ships on the Adriatic have rather drastically been reduced all by themselves when compared to figures recorded back in 2016.
According to a report from Dubrovački Dnevnik on the 26th of September, 2017, there was a significant drop of 7.5% in foreign cruise ships on the Croatian Adriatic this July. Although you wouldn't really feel the difference in Dubrovnik (traffic jams are still ever present and Pile is still like a can of sardines made out of stone) these figures continue the theme of this year's negative trend when it comes to cruise tourism, as data from the State Bureau of Statistics suggests.
In July of this year, 335 foreign cruise ships on the Adriatic means 60 less journeys than during July of 2016, and passengers on the cruise ships were 13.1% less than in the previous year, too. Cruise ships also spent less time in general on the Adriatic, a total of 737 days were recorded, which is almost 20% less than last year, Jutarnji List writes.
As was expected, the most cruise ship arrivals were recorded here in Dubrovnik, followed by Split and Korčula, Zadar, Hvar, Šibenik, and Rovinj.