Europe's main ports grew by an average of 6%, almost double that of US-Caribbean destinations.
Barcelona, the Balearic Islands, Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife account for 22%, or 5.7 million passengers, of cruise tourism in the main ports of Europe.
The Spanish ports of general interest included among the top 50 in the world (Barcelona, the Balearic Islands, Las Palmas, and Santa Cruz de Tenerife) received 5,756,000 cruise passengers in 2013, making Spain the second most popular cruise destination in Europe after Italy. Although almost half of the ports are located in the US-Caribbean region (26 ports) and the other half in Europe (24), the American ports accounted for nearly 60% of the total passengers. However, while the US-Caribbean ports saw a 3.8% increase in passenger numbers, rising from 37.2 million to 38.6 million, the European ports experienced a 6.1% increase, from 24.3 million to 25.8 million passengers.
Adding together passengers from Barcelona, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, Spanish ports account for about 22% of the passengers who traveled through the 24 main European ports.
In the world of cruise tourism, there are two types of ports: homeports, from which a cruise begins or ends its journey, and ports of call, where the ship stops for a few hours along its route. Obviously, being a homeport offers much greater benefits than port calls, as it involves using other forms of transportation to begin the journey, overnight stays in the departure city, spending on hotels, sightseeing, and so on. In this respect, American ports continue to be the main source of cruise passengers, and the top three homeports are located in the state of Florida. Barcelona ranks fourth, as most of the 2.7 million passengers who visited the Spanish port began their journey in the Catalan capital, unlike Nassau and Cozumel, which, despite having more passengers, are only ports of call.
