Cruise ships in Croatia continue to be a very problematic issue along the coast. With Dubrovnik, Croatia’s southernmost city, having suffered the most, just how have cruise ships in Croatia affected the Croatian coast in 2019?
As Morski writes on the 12th of January, 2020, from January to November last year, 75 foreign cruise ships sailed into Croatian seaports up and down the coast, which realised a total of 710 voyages. A total of 1.1 million passengers were on board these enormous, environmentally damaging ships, spending a total of 1,413 days in the Republic of Croatia.
In Sibenik-Knin County, 1.6 percent of the country’s total number of cruise ship visits were made, while Dubrovnik-Neretva County came first, rather unsurprisingly, with as much as 59.4 percent of Croatia’s total cruise ship visits realised. The following are Split-Dalmatia County (25.6 percent), Zadar County (6.5 percent), Istria County (3.8 percent), and Primorje-Gorski kotar County (3.1 percent), according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.
When it comes to Dalmatian cities, Dubrovnik had the highest number of cruise ship visits last year, with 518 cruise ship visits, followed by Split with 267 visits and Zadar with 117 visits. This is followed by the southern Dalmatian island of Korcula with 101 arrivals, Hvar with 100 and Sibenik with 64 cruise ship arrivals from January to November last year. The lowest number of arrivals in that period took place in the Istrian city of Pula – with only 20, reports local portal SibenikIN.
The largest number of voyages by cruise ships in Croatia was realised by ships flying the flags of Malta (199 voyages) and the Bahamas (127 voyages), while the largest number of passengers arrived by vessels flying the flags of Panama (287 thousand passengers) and then again by Malta (258 thousand passengers).
From January to November 2019, the number of trips made by cruise ships in Croatia increased by 5.1 percent over the same period back in 2018, and the number of passengers jumped by 8.6 percent.
Make sure to follow our dedicated travel page for much more on cruise ships in Croatia.
