Is Dubrovnik's problem finally on its way to being solved?
We've written somewhat extensively on the overall negative impact of en masse cruise tourism in Croatia. The environment suffers to a hardly comprehensible extent, and the lives of both locals and other tourists are often thrown into disarray owing to the sheer amount of chaos that tends to follow cruise ships around.
Thousands of passengers descend on a destination in large flocks when these enormous vessels dock and the infrastructure of many old cities, and not just Croatian ones, tends to suffer. If you'd like to read more on just what cruise ship tourism can do to a destination, with Croatia's southernmost city, Dubrovnik, being among the most adversely affected, click here and here.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 18th of December, 2017, cruise trips on the Adriatic this year have been considerably less frequent than they were last year - according to data, cruise ships spent 1,359 days in Croatia this year, which is a significant 18% less than in the same period recorded last year.
From the beginning of the year until the end of October, there were 644 recorded foreign cruise ships on the Croatian Adriatic, which is 16.3 percent less than were recorded last year, with 892.2 thousand passengers, equal to almost 13% less than there were in 2016, according to official data from the State Bureau for statistics (DZS).
According to that same data, these cruisers usually arrived in Croatia under the flag of the Bahamas, and then Malta, while the ships carrying the most passengers were usually sailing under the flags of Italy, the Bahamas and Panama.
Rather unsurprisingly, almost 65% of all these recorded trips were registered Croatia's southernmost region, Dubrovnik-Neretva County, where most of the ships recorded their first entry into Croatian waters. In the central Dalmatian region of Split-Dalmatia County, just 18.3 percent of the total number of trips were recorded, while the remaining few percent were recorded in the other five Adriatic counties further north.
In just October this year alone, there were 104 foreign vessels on cruises on the Croatian Adriatic, which is 8% less than was recorded during the same month last year. This declining trend has been continuing since March, while only back in February this year were such trips recorded in higher numbers than they were in February 2016.
