During the past month the Eurostat (EU statistical office) data stating that 1 in 5 passengers who make a cruise in Europe do so from Spanish ports. According to these data, Spain is the second country in the European Union with the highest number of cruise departures in 2015.
The total number of cruise passengers who started their journey in Spain is 1,2 million people, 19% of the total. Italy is the first country in this respect of the European Union, with 35 percent.
After Italy and Spain is the United Kingdom, with about 1 million passengers. Curiously, the port with the largest number of tourists is in the UK, it is Southampton with 829.000 passengers.
In total 6,2 million people embarked on cruises from the European Union in 2015. The years 2012 and 2014 were the ones that broke records when this figure reached almost 7 million passengers.
For this year 2017, according to the authorities of the different Spanish ports, there will be 8,8 million cruise passengers, passing through the ports, which does not mean that they will embark for the first time from here. In ten years the number of tourists arriving on cruise ships has doubled. The figure for the first half of 2017 is more than 3,62 million tourists, this is 1,7% more than in the same period of 2016, and a new all-time high.
The port of Barcelona grew by 2,27%, exceeded one million passengers and continues to be the main European destination, and fourth in the world as a base port.
The international association of cruise lines, CLIA, globally estimates the number of cruise passengers who embarked in the first half of 24 at 2017 million, and it must be taken into account that these represent 2% of the 1.300 billion tourists that are in the whole planet.