In 2019, only a maximum of two cruise ships will be allowed to dock in Dubrovnik on the same day, carrying a maximum of 5,000 passengers in total.
This was announced by the city's mayor, Mato Frankovic, who is thus tackling the problems of congestion and gentrification that the rebuilt city had been experiencing over the last decade. A city of 50,000 inhabitants that could receive up to 10,000 passengers in a single day and that had seen the number of residents in the historic center dwindle to 1,500.
“We have already signed contracts with the cruise lines for next year, so we will have a maximum of two ships per day, from Monday to Sunday. Sometimes there will be only one, sometimes two, and perhaps sometimes one in the morning and another in the afternoon, but in any case, it will be a maximum of two per day,” the mayor commented.
Dubrovnik is the perfect cruise destination. Its charmingly reconstructed walled historic center, rebuilt after the Balkan Wars, is easily explored on foot by cruise passengers, who can even walk along its walls and enjoy the views of the Adriatic. Its popularity only increased with the inclusion of some locations in the Game of Thrones series, but its success has been so great that the industry and the world press have cited it as an example of overcrowding on numerous occasions.
UNESCO, on whose World Heritage list Dubrovnik has been listed since 1979, had long warned of the possibility of placing the city on the list of endangered cultural heritage sites.
