Clúster

The 77,000 passengers registered in the first four months of this year allow the previous record to be surpassed by 16%.

Cruise tourism has made a strong comeback to the ports of Galicia. Like the rest of the areas of tourist activity, these trips were also severely affected by the pandemic, but in this case the recovery is being more accelerated to the point of having already exceeded in the first four months of this year the pre-covid figures and even set a new record for passengers arriving in Galicia.

The data of Puertos del Estado compiled and analysed by the Area of Studies and Research of Tourism of Galicia (AEITG) allow to check how the 77,132 passengers registered during the first four months of this year contrast visibly with the 19,051 of the same period of 2020, interrupted by the beginning of the pandemic, and, especially, with the 0 visitors of 2021, in full cessation of the activity of the shipping companies due to the restrictions of the covid. Moreover, this figure represents a significant increase (16%) compared to the previous record number of passengers in the first four months of the year in Galicia: 66,597 in 2019. Moreover, this positive dynamic gives continuity to the one experienced during the third quarter of last year, when 69,095 passengers disembarked in Galician ports.

The port of Vigo, with 40,042 cruise passengers in the first four months of this year, leads the Galician ranking ahead of A Coruña (35,971) and Ferrol-San Cibrao (1,119). In the case of Vigo this is the best data of its historical series with an increase of 50% compared to 2019, while in A Coruña it is slightly below the record of that year (36,593 passengers) and in Ferrol they are still far from the figures recorded in the years prior to the pandemic, as is also the case with the port of Vilagarcía de Arousa, which has not added any passengers during the first four months of this 2022.