Cruise and ferry industry discusses how to promote Adriatic

Ports and cruise and ferry lines discuss issues facing the region at the Adriatic Sea Forum in Croatia
Cruise and ferry industry discusses how to promote Adriatic

By Rebecca Gibson |


The 2015 Adriatic Sea Forum opened in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on 23 April.

The event has been organised by research and consulting firm Risposte Turismo in partnership with Dubronvik Port Authority and the Municipality of Dubrovnik with the support of the Dubrovnik Tourist Board and ACI Marina Dubrovnik.

It opened with ‘The Adriatic: a sea, a destination, a brand’ session, during which speakers from various Adriatic tourism organisations highlighted the need to develop tools to help promote the Adriatic as a single tourism destination. Speakers included Maja Pak, head of the research and development sector of Spirit Slovenia; Cristiano Radaelli, special commissioner of the Italian National Agency of Tourism ENIT; and Željka Radak Kukavicic, director of the National Tourism Organisation of Montenegro.

John Tercek, Royal Caribbean International’s vice president of commercial development, held a keynote session to analyse the cruise terminal infrastructures in the Adriatic.

Michele Witthaus, editor of International Cruise & Ferry Review, then moderated a ‘Focus ferry: building new routes’ session, which featured comment from representatives of Croatian ferry operator Jadrolinija, Italian ports association Assoporti, the Port Authority of Split, and Adriatic maritime agency Agencija Za Obalni Linijski Pomorski Promet.

In addition, Francesco di Cesare, Risposte Turismo’s president, presented the first Adriatic Sea Tourism Report, which offers an analysis of the flow, volume, type and direction of tourism in the area (cruises, ferries and boating) and details the impact it has had on the seven countries with an Adriatic coast.

According to the report, the Adriatic ports will handle 3,702 cruise calls and around 4.89 million passengers in 2015, an increase of 8.47% and 5.05% from last year, respectively.

Last year, Italy handled 52.6% of the total number of cruise passengers that visited the Adriatic region, which amounted to 2.4 million people, as well as 768 calls. Meanwhile, Croatia received 1,247 calls and around 1.1 million guests, while Greece welcomed 676,000 passengers and 410 ship visits.

This year, the busiest individual Adriatic port will be Venice in Italy, which will welcome 1.63 million cruise passengers and 525 calls (an increase of 7.6% since 2014). Dubrovnik, which will handle 3.1% more passengers (870,000) and 584 calls, while the Greek port of Corfu expects to receive a total of 670,000 people during 405 ship visits.

Meanwhile, 17.31 million passengers are expected to visit the region’s 40 ferry ports in 2015, while calls are expected to increase by 0.98% to an estimated 80,600.

The busiest four ports in terms of passengers numbers will be the Croatian ports of Split and Zadar, which expect four million and 2.2 million passengers respectively, as well as Corfu and the Italian port of Ancona, which are scheduled to handle 1.5 million and just over one million people respectively.

“The figures presented today on maritime tourism in the Adriatic show a positive turnaround for the cruise industry in 2015, confirming the upturn – modest for the moment – in ferry traffic and in how confident operators are that business in the nautical sector will increase, also characterised by continual investments right along the Adriatic coast,” said di Cesare. “These signals are not sufficient to close the significant gap that remains between the potential of the Adriatic as a destination and the results achieved so far. This gap could be closed by working on a medium- to long-term project able to give the Adriatic as a destination its own distinctive image, positioning and brand, and to present the Adriatic as a single destination composed of a number of distinct areas.”

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