Cruise passenger traffic through Spanish ports grew by 75% with 6.1 million passengers up to July

Passengers, both cruise and scheduled airlines, reached 20.8 million people, with an increase of 27.6% during the first seven months of the year

25-08-2023 (State Ports Public Body). Total passenger traffic through the 46 ports that make up the general system of the State maintains a strong upward trend, with a growth of 27.6% up to July, which represents 20.8 million passengers. In particular, cruise passengers grew by 74.8% and added 6.1 million visitors in the first 7 months, surpassing the record figures of 2019, with an increase of 7.6% compared to that period of that year, when 5.6 million cruise passengers were reached.

As for goods, the dynamics of the previous month were maintained, after reaching 320.1 million tonnes in the year to July, which represents a decrease of 4% compared to the same period of the previous year. The 2% increase in solid bulk during the first seven months of the year, which totalled 54.5 million tonnes, mainly due to the increase in grain and coal traffic, was not enough to offset the fall in liquid bulk (-4.6%) with 102.6 million tonnes, mainly due to crude oil traffic (-6.8%). nor general merchandise (-5.5%) with 154.5 million tonnes. The trend in traffic in Spanish ports is similarly pronounced in other European docks, mainly due to the economic recession and the fall in imports from the Asian continent, to which are added the consequences of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the trade sanctions imposed by European countries. In Spanish ports, this decrease is mainly due to the fall in containers in transit (-9.9%) with 4.8 million TEUs, and only in import/export containers (-0.9%), which weighs on the total movement of containers (-7.7%) with 9.5 million TEUs up to July.

Conventional general cargo increased by 0.7% to 50.5 million tonnes, driven by the good performance of vehicle traffic (+19%), both in passenger terms (14.3%) and goods (43.4%), with the movement through the ports of Tenerife and Barcelona, respectively, standing out.

Ro-ro traffic grew by 2.3% to 43.3 million tonnes, driven largely by intense activity in the ports of the Balearic Islands and Valencia.

Finally, the number of merchant ships through Spanish ports increased by 7% compared to the first seven months of the previous year with a total of 93,875 units, and gross tonnage grew by 7.4% to 1,496.4 million GT.