July the 14th, 2022 - From all the way up in Rijeka to all the way down to Dubrovnik, let's look at the list of the most popular Croatian ports during the first half of this year as tourism returns to normal in the post-pandemic period.
As Morski writes, the State Bureau of Statistics has published a report on cruise ship arrivals in Croatian ports in the first five months of this year. The most visited port in the last half a year has of course been Dubrovnik.
In the period from January to May 2022, 48 foreign cruise ships entered Croatian ports with 135 cruises successfully completed. There were 97 thousand passengers aboard those ships, who stayed in Croatia for a total of 278 days. In the same period back in 2021, no entry of a foreign ship in any Croatian port for a round trip was recorded due to the epidemiological measures introduced across Croatia, Europe and most of the rest of the world to prevent the further spread of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus.
Compared to the first five months of the pre-pandemic, record year of 2019, the number of trips by foreign cruise ships to Croatian ports up and down the coastline decreased by 21.1 percent, the number of days the ships stayed in those ports decreased by 28.0 percent, while the number of passengers on those ships decreased by a massive 60.9 percent.
Foreign cruise ships in the first five months of 2022 sailed under the flags of 11 countries in total. The largest number of trips by foreign cruise ships in Croatian ports was made under the flag of the Bahamas, with 34 trips in total, which is 25.2 percent of the total amount of trips made in the first five months of 2022. This flag was followed by cruises made under the flags of Malta (22 trips) and of Panama (17 trips).
Out of a total of 135 round trips, most of them were realised down in Dubrovnik-Neretva County (45.2 percent) and Split-Dalmatia County (31.9 percent), which is a total of 77.1 percent. The remaining 22.9 percent of trips into Croatian ports were made in the following counties: Zadar (15.5 percent), Sibenik-Knin (3.7 percent), Istria (3.0 percent) and Primorje-Gorski Kotar (0.7 percent).
The Port of Dubrovnik rather unsurprisingly had the most visits by foreign cruise ships (90 visits), followed by the ports of Split (68 visits), Zadar (35 visits), Korcula (17 visits), Sibenik (15 visits) and Hvar (14 visits).
For more, make sure to check out our dedicated travel section.
