In the first half of the year, there were 58 foreign ships in Croatian Adriatic, which made 240 round trips, on which there were 189,000 passengers, significantly more than in the same period last year, according to data from the Croatian Bureau of Statistics.

For the sake of comparison, last year due to strong pandemic travel restrictions for cruise ships there were only 15, with around eight thousand passengers.

The passengers who came on these ships in the first half of 2022, 189 thousand of them, stayed in Croatia for a total of 466 days, which is 423 days more than in the same period in 2021.

Despite large increases and the return of cruise ships to the Adriatic, in the first part of 2022 the results from the record, pre-pandemic year 2019 have not yet been reached, because then, compared to the same time in 2022, there were about 12 percent more cruises by foreign ships, and passengers on them by about 54 percent more.

Most cruises by foreign ships in the first half of 2022, or 46 percent of the total number, as in previous years, were in the waters of the Dubrovnik-Neretva County, followed by 31 percent in Split-Dalmatia County, while the remaining 23.4 percent of total trips were made in Zadar, Primorje-Gorski Kotar and Istria counties and Šibenik-Knin.

Dubrovnik was once again the most visited port of foreign cruise ships, followed by Split, Zadar, Hvar and Korčula, Šibenik and Rovinj.