Cruise liner tourism up by 3.1% in November

Total cruise passenger traffic for November amounted to 48,436, up by 3.1% over last year. There were 25 cruise liner calls during the month, with an average 1,937 passengers per vessel.

The National Statistics Office said that cruise passengers embarking from and landing in Malta stood at 287 and 308 respectively, significantly fewer than last year. On the other hand, visitors in transit increased by 12.2%, to 47,841.

The majority of cruise passengers (22,705 or 46.9% of the total) were between 60 and 79 years old. Female passengers outnumbered males and counted 24,654, or 50.9% of the total.

Visitors from EU countries amounted to 35,945 - an increase of 9.6% when compared to the corresponding month last year. The German market remained the largest European market, and was followed by the Italian market. The number of passengers from Non-EU Member States reached 12,491 - down by 12% over 2011. The majority of Non-EU cruise passengers came from the United States and amounted to 3,403.

During this eleven-month period, total cruise passengers reached 590,630, an increase of 9.2% over last year. Of these, 80.3 % came from EU Member States. There was an increase of 11.7 % in cruise passengers coming from EU Member States when compared to last year. Most EU visitors either came from Germany (156,168) or from Italy (95,271).

Passengers from Non-EU countries stood at 116,526, of whom 31.8% were US nationals.

Most cruise passengers were aged between 40 and 59, and totalled 201,832. These were followed by passengers in the 60-79 age bracket, which stood at 190,563. Male passengers amounted to 287,018, while females counted 303,612.

Passengers who also visited the island of Gozo increased substantially when compared to the corresponding period last year and reached 3,546.