This year will be an "absolute record" for cruise liner passengers, Valletta Cruise Port’s CEO Stephen Xuereb said this morning at a press conference off Waterfront.

The Grand Harbour today welcomed five cruise liners with a total of 14,000 passengers and some 6,000 crew members.

Passengers hailed from the US, Canada, France, Spain and Italy, among others.

The harbour has hosted up to seven liners at once.

Tourism Minister Edward Zammit Lewis said there will be 325 cruise ship calls in all this year with a total of 640,000 passengers.

He added that this year’s figures had turned the tables on 2013, after 2014 was already an improvement on the previous year.

Mr Xuereb said bookings were already coming in for 2016 and it looked like it was also going to be a good year.

Earlier today, the NSO said that total cruise passenger traffic during between April and June amounted to 205,224, an increase of 66.4 per cent over the same period last year, the National Statistics Office said.

It said there were 108 cruise liner calls during the second quarter, 19 more than last year.

At 87 per cent, transit passengers accounted for the vast majority of total traffic, reaching 178,589.

Around 2,386 passengers visited Gozo, while 6,186 passengers spent at least one night on board their berthed cruise liner.

Visitors from EU states comprised 75.6 per cent of total traffic, the major markets being Germany, Italy and France. The total number of passengers from non-EU countries stood at 50,151, 27.1 per cent of whom came from the United States.

The largest share of passengers were in the 60-79 age bracket and were followed by those aged between 40 and 59.

During the first half of the year, total cruise passengers stood at 225,877, a rise of 39.9 per cent over 2014.

Of these, 75.8 per cent came from EU states. The biggest increases were recorded from the German and Italian markets, which advanced by 24,532 and 12,528 passengers respectively.

In contrast, passengers from the United Kingdom and France dropped by 2,631 and 2,545 respectively.

There were 117 cruise liner calls in the first six months, with an average 1,931 passengers per vessel, compared to 112 calls and an average 1,442 passengers per vessel in January-June last year.

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