Nearly 377,000 cruise passengers visit Türkiye in 7 months

ISTANBUL

A total of 376,924 international tourists have visited Türkiye with cruise liners in the first seven months of this year, with the Aegean tourism hub Kuşadası hosting the most cruise passengers with some 212,000, the Turkish General Directorate of Maritime Affairs has declared.

According to a statement announced on Aug. 10 by the institution, four cruise liners with 1,433 passengers visited Türkiye in January. Some 343 cruise passengers arrived in the country, 270 departed and some 820 were transit cruise passengers.

February was the month with the least number of passengers with only one cruise liner arriving in the country. 293 out of the 294 passengers coming to Türkiye were transit passengers. Only one person entered Turkish soil with a cruise liner in February.

Six cruise liners came to Türkiye in March with a total of 629 passengers. April was the month that the number of ships and passengers started increasing. Some 48 ships carried approximately 33,000 passengers to the country.

In May, the number of cruise passengers surpassed 100,000. A total of 104,542 passengers stepped on to land from 136 ships.

The number of ships arriving at the country’s ports decreased since June, but the number of the passengers skyrocketed. Some 122 ships carried a total of 115,907 passengers in June. The number of passengers hit a year record in July with 121,107 passengers on 120 ships.

The statistics also showed that the Kuşadası province of the Aegean province of Aydın was at the top of the list of the 15 ports in Türkiye hosting the most cruise passengers in seven months.

With 220 cruise ships docking at Kuşadası port resulting in cruise passenger traffic of a total of 212,486 people.

Galataport, Istanbul’s new port with the first ship docking in October 2021, came after Kuşadası with a total of 98,033 passengers on 79 cruise liners.

The Aegean tourism destination Bodrum sat in third with 28,629 passengers on 45 ships and the western province of İzmir followed it with nearly 14,000 passengers on only 9 ships.

The northwestern province of Çanakkale and İzmir’s Çeşme district were two docks topping 5,000 in the number of passengers category.

Between 2,000 and 5,000 passengers category, there docks shined. The southern province of Antalya hosted nearly 3,800 tourists on 10 ships, İzmir’s Dikili nearly 2,900 people on 16 ships and the Aegean coastal district Marmaris nearly 2,300 on four cruise liners.

Only one cruise liner visited each of the Mediterranean coastal district of Alanya and the northern province of Sinop. Alanya hosted 700 transit cruise passengers. Sinop sat at the bottom of the list with only 323 passengers.