Fewer cruise passengers in November - more since January

Cruise passengers last month numbered 44,441, a drop of 12,925 passengers over the same month last year, the National Statistics Office said.

It said that embarkations from and landings in Malta stood at 445 and 550 persons respectively.

Total cruise passenger traffic in Malta between January and November amounted to 540,724, an increase of 11.9 percent over the comparative period last year.

Passengers from EU countries accounted for 77 percent of total traffic, the main markets being Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany. The American market remained substantial, representing 57.6 percent of non-EU incoming passengers.

The overall growth in cruise passenger traffic was underpinned by increases in the American, British and Spanish markets. At the same time, the cruise passenger scene was characterised by falls in the German and Italian markets, of 27,743 and 13,437 passengers, respectively.

On a gender basis, female passengers exceeded male ones by 1.2 percent. The largest proportion of passengers - 33.2 percent - comprised persons aged between 40 and 59, followed by those in the 60 to 79 age bracket who accounted for 30.7 percent of the total.