April the 9th, 2022 - Dubrovnik once had an enormous issue with cruise ships and hoards of day trippers steamrolling into the city, causing infrastructure issues and traffic jams. The pandemic changed all that, with the very first cruiser of 2022, MSC Fantasia, having arrived in the Pearl of the Adriatic on Thursday.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, MSC Fantasia, otherwise the first MSC vessel to arrive in the City of Dubrovnik this year, sailed into Dubrovnik's Port of Gruz on Thursday morning under the command of Captain Antonin Sammartan. This Fantasia class ship which can accommodate up to 4,300 passengers, will visit Dubrovnik on Thursdays until the end of the season, which is currently scheduled for September the 8th, 2022.

These giant ships of the MSC Cruises fleet will also visit the Croatian cities of Split, Zadar and Rijeka and achieve a total of 63 arrivals in various Croatian ports during this year's cruise season, which will end with its arrival in Split on November the 21st, 2022.

Next Saturday, another gigantic vessel, MSC Armonia, will sail into the City of Split for the first time, where its first passengers will board. This year's MSC Cruises offer includes boarding on the Eastern Mediterranean cruises in Split and Zadar on the MSC Armonia, with a tour of the Italian cities of Venice and Brindisi, and then the Greek Mykonos and Piraeus / Athens.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated travel section.

December 10, 2021 - The cruise industry was one of the most affected due to the coronavirus pandemic, but this year Dubrovnik registered very positive numbers, with a cruise tax revenue estimated at almost 1.5 million kuna and would be invested in transport infrastructure to raise the standard of the destination.

As of January 1 this year, the City of Dubrovnik has started collecting tourist tax for cruise ships. It was announced back in 2019 when the relevant Ministry of Tourism introduced the so-called cruise tax.

After 2020, in which the cruise industry was paralyzed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many were skeptical this year in the months before the start of the summer season, with unfavorable forecasts in a city that in normal circumstances usually receive hundreds of cruises during peak season.

HrTurizam reports that this year there were a total of 135 cruiser touches that had over 50 passengers on board and as such were subject to a fee. Thus, the total revenue of the tourist tax paid by ships on international cruises for 2021 is 1,463,000 kuna, of which 85% - 1,243,550 kuna belongs to the City of Dubrovnik, and 15% - 219,450 kuna belongs to the Dubrovnik-Neretva County.

These are earmarked funds that would be invested in transport infrastructure to raise the standard of the destination.

At a recent meeting with representatives of CLIA, the umbrella organization of cruise companies, Dubrovnik Mayor Mato Franković reported on the continuation of cruise tax revenue collection next year, where the City of Dubrovnik, as this year, will show flexibility in relation to the capacity of ships.

Namely, due to the fact that due to special safety protocols, conditioned by the COVID pandemic, cruise ships sailed mostly with only half the capacity, the Ministry of Tourism and Sports gave the opinion that, during these circumstances, the capacity of passengers on board the number of passengers on the ship calling at the port, not as the total capacity of the ship.

For more, check out our dedicated business section.

May 2, 2021 - In a press release, the candidate for the mayor of Dubrovnik, Andro Vlahušić, asked for experienced people and professionals to save the cruising season.

As Dulist.hr reports, Andro Vlahušić has requested a staff solution regarding the Dubrovnik Port Authority director, Blaž Pezo, through an open statement from his platform, Dubrovnik our city:

‘‘Dubrovnik is, among other things, a city of sailors. In history, they created a network of trade and connected the city with the whole world. Even today, Dubrovnik naval officers have impressive captaincy and managerial careers at the world's largest companies. That is why in 2017, it was easy to find someone professional and experienced to come to the head of the Dubrovnik Port Authority. However, HDZ decided on the completely opposite approach and appointed a person who has neither a day of work experience nor an hour of education in maritime affairs. Although he did not meet the conditions of the tender, HDZ party operative (which was once called the party commissioner) Blaž Pezo was appointed director of the Dubrovnik Port Authority. The Dubrovnik public protested then, but the commissioner rubbed his hands together. For obedience and loyalty, he was awarded a respectable position upon which hundreds of jobs depend in Dubrovnik. Aware of the way in which he was appointed, he continued to deal exclusively with the party, not professional tasks. That is why cruisers bypass Dubrovnik today. There was no one in the Port Authority to prepare and develop the epidemiological protocols that are a prerequisite for receiving ships on cruises’’, Vlahušić said in a statement and continued:

‘‘Unfortunately, Mayor Franković did not do anything in the preparation of the protocol of visiting the City, entering museums, the walls or movement in organised groups in an epidemiologically safe way. And hundreds of jobs have become compromised. Buses, taxi drivers, guides, souvenir shops and restaurants will remain without income for the second year in a row. They will not be able to survive it. The responsibility of the irresponsible director Pezo, but also of those who appointed him even though he is not qualified, is simply such that the minimum of decency is to admit a mistake, dismiss him, and appoint someone who has knowledge of ships and seafaring in his place.

The Dubrovnik our City platform calls on Minister Butković to find a staffing solution for this catastrophic situation without delay because Dubrovnik cannot afford that the income that once remained in Dubrovnik today goes to Greece and Cyprus just because someone does not know that his job is to negotiate with directors of shipping companies, not pay for beer to party cadets. And with every cruiser that will not sail into Dubrovnik, a million kuna is lost.

The people of Dubrovnik still remember how the Dubrovnik hospital became a central place for examinations and medical treatments of the world's largest cruising company at the time when it was headed by Dr. Vlahušić.

The Dubrovnik our City platform and candidate for mayor, Andro Vlahušić, have been proposing and appealing for months that epidemiological protocols for receiving ships and visiting the historic core be developed, defined and implemented, and this will be our first task as soon as we come to power and thus create preconditions for the return of cruisers and job preservation.

In the year in which the Olympic Games are being organised, this is very possible. We just need to appoint serious people, experienced professionals and work with all our strength to make that happen’’, Vlahušić and his platform Dubrovnik our City point out.

For more about politics in Croatia, be sure to bookmark our dedicated section.

For more about ''the Pearl of the Adriatic'', visit Total Croatia's Dubrovnik in a Page 2021 guide HERE.

Dubrovnik and its air are being poisoned by cruise ships and the harmful emissions they pump out into the atmosphere. One study reveals the horrifying truth of the reality of this extremely damaging branch of tourism, and just how much disease is being caused by these gigantic ships all over Europe.

As Morski writes on the 5th of July, 2019, the "Transportation and Enviroment" Association, along with the support of numerous similar environmental foundations, including the European Commission (EC), conducted extensive research on air pollution in European destinations in ports which accept cruise ships in 2017. The study also presents the results of research from Croatia's top destination - Dubrovnik, and the situation appears to be very troubling.

The authors of the study made sure to showcase the the observed pollution levels in Dubrovnik in figures and tables, so as to make them as clear as possible. In the study, the release of harmful particles of sulfur and nitrogen oxide was compared with that produced by the number of registered vehicles present at cruising destinations.

According to the data, 27,173 vehicles were registered in Dubrovnik at that time. During 2017, in the port of Gruž, forty such massive vessels sailed in while taking round trips, spending a total of 2,791 hours moored, and during that time, 2,523 kilograms of contaminated particles were discharged into Dubrovnik's air.

During that same time, the aforementioned 27,173 vehicles registered in the Dubrovnik area released 11,561 kilograms of exhaust gases into the air. Translated into basic percentages: 20.1 percent of the air pollution in Dubrovnik comes directly from cruise ships, according to a report from Dubrovniknet.

When considering the release of harmful compounds such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides, the data for Dubrovnik is as follows: During those 2,791 hours of cruise ships being moored in Gruž, cruise ships released a massive 140,259 kilograms of nitrogen oxide into the air, while 27,173 registered vehicles during that same year released 100,174 kilograms of the same harmful compound.

The situation isn't ideal when it comes to sulfur oxide either. During their stay, cruise ships released 6,344 kilograms of sulfur oxide into Dubrovnik's air, and passenger cars released 331 kilograms of the same compound during that time.

The main purpose of the study is to analyse air pollution caused by cruise ships in European seas. The results show that the carnivals owned by Carnival alone released an extremely worrying ten times more sulfur dioxide into the air in European waters alone. This substance is known to cause disease. The countries this was recorded in range from Spain, Italy and Greece, to France and Norway. Among the main cruise ports, Barcelona, ​​Palma de Mallorca and Venice are the most polluted.

The analysis also reveals that even in Sulfur Emmission Control Areas (SECAs), where airborne pollution is strictly controlled, these ships and their environmental damage are also present. In Denmark, for example, whose coasts are entirely within SECA, cruise ships released eighteen times more sulfur oxide in 2017 than 2.5 million registered vehicles per annum did.

This is a damning reflection on the effectiveness of the fuel quality directive on road traffic and the total failure to implement the same standards at sea, the study concludes.

You can read One Corporation to Pollute Them All in English language and familiarise yourself with the horrors of the cruise ship industry by clicking here.

Follow our dedicated lifestyle page for much more. If it's just Dubrovnik and the extreme south of Dalmatia you're interested in, give Total Dubrovnik a follow and/or check out Dubrovnik in a Page.