November 5 (SeeNews) - A total of 24 foreign cruise ships made 134 visits to Croatian seaports in the first nine months of 2021, up from 10 vessels that made 26 journeys in the same period last year but far below the pre-pandemic numbers of 2019, the country's statistical office said on Friday.
There were 137,529 passengers on board the cruise ships that visited Croatia in January-September 2021, up from just 4,138 in the same period of last year, when due to the COVID-19 pandemic stricter epidemiological measures were introduced to limit the number of passengers on those vessels, the statistical office said in a monthly report last week.
Compared to the first nine months of 2019, the number of journeys of foreign vessels on cruise was lower by 76.4%, the total number of sojourns by 67.3% and the number of passengers on board those vessels by 84.5%.
In the first nine months of 2021, foreign cruise ships visited the port of Dubrovnik 111 times, Split followed with 63 visits, Korcula with 40, Hvar with 34, and Sibenik with 31 visits.
Tourism is a key industry for the Croatian economy, contributing a fifth of the country's GDP.